


when the wolves are silent - B sides

by deathrae



Series: moonsinger chronicles [2]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, after two chapters this thing is mostly fluff which seems appropriate for a werewolf AU fic, be warned, but I dunno, check the tags cuz I'll update as chapters get added, hurr hurr I'm hilarious thank you for taking me remotely seriously, it will almost certainly change as we go, listen I have NO idea what the rating should be, oops chapter 6 drags the rating up for violence and body horror, s2e10 spoilers because shae is a thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-01-06 15:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12213327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: Missing scenes and moments fromwhen the wolves are silent and only the moon howls, a predominantly canon-compliant AU fic in which Nicole Haught was bitten about a year before moving to Purgatory.





	1. Date Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between Chapter 10 and Chapter 11.

Wednesday morning, the day after what she’d already started thinking of as _The Conversation_ in the sheriff’s office, she skimmed through Yelp reviews, looked at some online menus, and tried to imagine how hard it would be to get dinner reservations for the second of December. And as she was doing all this, a somewhat disheartening realization hit her like a train.

“Jesus,” she muttered at her screen, still scrolling. “I don’t think I’ve been on a date in two years.”

To be fair, she’d been a bit... _distracted_. First by Shae, then by being a big toothy monster three nights a month. Not exactly first-date conversation material, and then how do you bring it up afterward? _By the way, don’t swing by if the moon’s full. It’s not good for your health_. She still hadn’t figured out how to tell Waverly, when it came right down to it, but she’d figure that out. The moon was a couple weeks away, so... she had time. Not much of it, but still, time. She knew she owed Waverly an explanation, but it was just so hard to bring up out of the blue. Dolls and Wynonna made it their professional business to know, but Waverly? She still wasn’t entirely sure what being a consultant for Black Badge meant. Did she know the whole story? Part of the story?

Did she know only enough to know that non-humans are vicious terrifying monsters who’ll eat your face, and not that they could, sometimes, actually be pretty decent folk?

“Me neither,” Nedley said idly, and she jumped in her chair, grabbing at her desk to steady herself before she spun around or rolled away.

“Sir!” she protested, as an afterthought, and pressed a hand to her chest, trying to slow her racing heart by sheer force of will.

He was standing to the side of her desk, holding his iconic #1 Dad mug and sipping from it. By the smell of it, it was coffee. Which was good, considering it was some 10 in the morning. At her exclamation he raised his eyebrows, surprised.

“Distracted, Haught?”

She flushed and looked down at her computer screen, closing the tabs she was on. “Sorry, sir.”

He hummed thoughtfully and sipped. “So who’s the lucky fella?”

She grimaced and bobbed her head in what she hoped look like shy discomfort. “Um, I’d rather not go into it.”

“Just so long as it’s not Hardy.”

She physically gagged. “No, sir. Um. No, it is _definitely_ not Champ Hardy.”

“Good.” He smirked behind his mug. “Besides, didn’t much figure you for the type to wait for a girl to break up with someone in order to scoop him up.”

She cleared her throat. “No, that really isn’t me, sir. Did you need me for something?”

“Yep. Called your name, but you were pretty focused.”

She winced. “Right. Sorry.”

In his office he gave her a couple files to work on, talking her through some of the details and waiting as she took some notes. They were at it for almost an hour, catching up on the cases she’d just finished, and a few that were still open.

When she was finished and got up to leave, he waved a hand at her.

“Haught.”

“Yes sir?”

“Try the Levilla.”

She furrowed her brow. “Sir?”

“It’s on the near edge of the city. Nice place.” He nodded, thoughtful. “Took my wife there for our 10th anniversary. Good food.”

For a moment she just stared at him, shocked. “Thank you, sir. I’ll– I’ll do that.”


	2. Leaving Marks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole sets expectations... and one quick ground rule.
> 
> Set between Chapter 11 and Chapter 12.

Nicole had been told more than once that she was bad at taking breaks, but she preferred to think that she just knew better than others how long she could work before she needed to step away from a project.

Like now. She’d been tracking truck registration filings for a day already and she was getting no closer to figuring out who owned the Ford Expedition she’d seen in the city. At the point where she found herself almost nose-to-screen with her computer and blinking away bleary tears, she finally decided it was time to stop. At least for a little while.

“Hey.”

In the circumstances, it was probably a very bad sign that Waverly had managed to sneak up on her. Nicole jumped, glancing up at her... what word fit? She wasn’t sure, and they hadn’t had much time to discuss it.

“Hey,” she said, wiping a hand across her face and grinning up at Waverly, maybe just a little dopey-eyed. “Need something?”

Waverly bit her lip—partially, Nicole thought, to hide a smile. “Listen, if you’re gonna give me lines that easy I refuse to be held responsible.”

Nicole tilted her head a little and frowned. “What?”

Waverly leaned across Nicole’s desk, laying a hand down on top of the notes Nicole had been writing until she could bring her mouth close to Nicole’s ear. She was wearing... well truth be told Nicole wasn’t sure she’d noticed, but the collar was low, and Nicole tried not to stare as she leaned over Nicole’s desk. Waverly smelled amazing, as usual—wildflowers and leather and warmth—and when she spoke, low but crystalline clear this close to Nicole’s ear, her voice sent heat chasing down Nicole’s spine.

“I do need something, _Officer_ Haught, but maybe we’d be better off chatting in private. I believe you’re off in five?”

 _“Oh,”_ Nicole breathed, and glanced toward the clock. “Uh. You checked my schedule?”

Waverly straightened again and winked. “Maybe. Mind if I sit while you finish up?”

“No, uh, please,” Nicole muttered, gesturing to the chair. Waverly sat, polite as you please, looking for all the world like she had not just set Nicole’s entire body and most of her rational mind on fire. Her wolf was actually quiet, and she found herself imagining it giving her a sympathetic _oh you’re in **so** deep_ look as she hastily wrapped up what she was doing. She forced herself to take decent notes, or else she’d never be able to make sense of them tomorrow, but they might’ve been a bit heavier on shorthand and code than usual.

When the clock had ticked over she got up, gathering up her jacket. “Did you want a ride home?”

Waverly smirked and stood. “Not to my place, no.”

Nicole grinned and snatched her keys off the desk. “Well then. Shall we?”

 

It was an effort of will to keep both hands on the wheel as she drove them to her place, and it didn’t help when Waverly leaned a little closer and rested her elbow on the center console. Nicole could feel Waverly’s eyes on her, her interest a tangible thing, and Nicole couldn’t help smiling and glancing her way as she pulled into her driveway.

“Work okay?” Waverly asked, as they left the cruiser and headed up the front walk. She laughed when Nicole found the one patch of ice on her driveway with a shoe and pinwheeled her arms to keep her balance.

“Eh, same old same old,” she said, brushing snow off her shoes once she reached her front door. “How about you?”

“Mm, nothing of interest really.” Waverly followed her in, noting Calamity Jane lounging on a bookshelf. “Dolls being secretive as usual.”

“So,” Nicole said, as she turned to close her front door. The latch clicked, and the deadbolt slid home with a low _thunk_ , and when she turned around, halfway into a question of _what exactly did you have in mind_ , Waverly’s mouth pressed against hers, interrupting her rather handily. Waverly pushed against her until Nicole’s back hit the door and cool hands tugged, impatient, at the shoulders of Nicole’s jacket until it slipped off.

Well, it _was_ an answer, when she thought about it.

Waverly’s kiss muffled her soft laugh, and Nicole cupped her face in her hands, holding her close and sliding her fingers into Waverly’s hair.

“And to think,” Nicole murmured when Waverly pulled back and wriggled out of her coat. “That I was worried that I’d be the one who seemed desperate.”

Waverly laughed and stepped backward, tucking her finger into Nicole’s gun belt and towing her along.

Nicole grinned and tapped a finger to Waverly’s nose. “Hold on, hold on, lemme lock this up.”

Waverly heaved a sigh, but smiled through it. “Oh _fine.”_

“Can I get you anything, once I’m out of uniform?” she called back as she headed to her bedroom. “Water or something?”

“Just you,” Waverly called back, and laughed when Nicole’s foot hit the doorframe of her bedroom. “You okay?”

Nicole cleared her throat and hastily stowed her gear in its safe, stripping out of her uniform. “Yeah! Uh. Yep, I’m fine.” God, it was like she was 16 again, clumsy and overwhelmed. She heard Waverly’s footsteps in the hallway and turned just as she pulled an old academy t-shirt into place.

“You know,” Waverly mused, lounging against the doorframe and looking Nicole up and down, taking in the faded school graphic and the soft, comfortable pants Nicole had swapped for the khakis. “I thought you looked good in uniform, but you look _just_ as good out of it. I can’t decide if I’m the luckiest woman in the world or if you sold your soul to the devil or something.”

“Why couldn’t it be both?” Nicole laughed and pulled the tie out of her hair, running her fingers through the braid for a moment. She crossed back to her door, looking at Waverly in turn. “Still, I think it takes one to know one.”

Waverly grinned but pushed at Nicole’s chest, and Nicole let her, shifting back a step in the process. “Flatterer.”

“Mmhm.”

Waverly moved closer, setting her hands on Nicole’s arms to guide her backward until her calves hit the edge of her bed and she flopped down onto it. Nicole’s eyebrows rose as Waverly stood in front of her, tracing fingers down a few loose strands of her hair.

“Um, maybe moving a little quick?” Nicole asked. It sent a slight unease through her chest. Waverly had never struck her as being the _college experiment_ type of girl, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d misjudged a woman. Waverly’s heartbeat jumped and her face went pink, and for a moment she pulled away.

She pressed her lips together. “No, um. No, that wasn’t what I meant. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lead like that—”

Nicole grinned and shook her head. “That’s fine, Waverly. You know I’m not asking anything of you, right? You call the shots. We do this at your pace. _Our_ pace. And nobody else’s.”

“I do. Know, I mean. I know you aren’t.” Waverly always smiled like it hurt to do anything else. “But, well, you are very tall. And I’m. Not.”

Nicole laughed and leaned back on her hands, partially to keep them out of trouble. “Ohhh, I see. This is because I teased you about making out on my boss’ sofa, isn’t it.”

 _“Maybe.”_ Waverly sniffed, but the facade of offended dignity cracked immediately and she grinned, and sat down next to Nicole on the bed. “Just thought this might be a little more comfortable.”

 _“Well_ in that case,” Nicole murmured, turning toward her and raising one hand to trail up under her chin. Waverly met her halfway, her lips soft and warm and tasting just a little bit like coffee. They started simple enough, slow enough, but Waverly hadn’t dragged her out of work all the way to her house to play it slow, and it didn’t take much for her to shift backward, tangling her hands into Nicole’s t-shirt and pulling her along.

Nicole grinned and crawled up to follow her. She leaned back long enough for Waverly to get comfortable with both her feet pointed generally in the correct direction, then slid down against her, curling one arm under her to hold her close and give Waverly room to let her hands wander, trailing from Nicole’s shoulders to her hair, to her elbow, to the sharp line of her jaw.

It occurred to her, distantly, like someone shouting it to her through water, that her bed was going to smell like Waverly tonight, which was both exciting and terrifying. The animal of her loved it, was already pleased to be so close, breathing her in, and wanted more, despite what she’d _just_ gotten done saying about pacing. Waverly’s hands slid down to curl around her neck, and Nicole let her mouth stray off Waverly’s, trailing along the edge of her jaw and then lower, along the line of her throat.

Waverly tilted her head back, probably just to give her space, but the wolf _reveled_ in it, thrilled by the submission of it, and she pressed her mouth against Waverly’s skin, tracing muscle with her teeth. Waverly made a soft sound, all heat and need, and Nicole forced herself to pull back far enough to make eye contact.

“Wh-what’s wrong?”

Nicole cleared her throat, aware her face was trying to compete with her hair for vibrant color. “Just wanted to let you know something up front.”

Waverly narrowed her eyes, clearly confused. “O...kay?”

“I um. I don’t bite.”

Waverly blinked, then frowned, thoughtful. “Never?”

Nicole choked on a laugh. “Are you _disappointed?”_

Waverly flushed. “Well! It’s.” She glanced aside. “It’s nice, sometimes. The um. The territorial thing. Not always,” she said, pulling a face, and Nicole tried not to think about who might’ve inspired that particular expression, “But. Sometimes. With... certain people.”

Nicole had not, before the bite, been an overly possessive person. Any woman she dated was not _hers_ , she was still herself. Whether or not any girlfriend of hers gave any or all of herself to Nicole was not her place to control or to designate or place expectations or boundaries on.

 _And in general,_ all those things were still true. But in the last year she _had_ gained a new understanding of the instinct to mark something as her own, to display for all the world to see that this thing or this person was _hers_ , was _protected_ and cared for and should someone attempt to take, control, or harm that person, there would be furry fucking hell to pay for it.

So when Waverly said things like _that_ , lounging in Nicole’s bed as some five-plus-feet of warm, supple grace, her lips kiss-bruised and warm, it was really, _really_ goddamn hard to keep her wolf quiet and its instincts in check.

“Well now,” Nicole murmured, when she could trust her voice not to come out as a husky burr, and Waverly glanced up at her, her eyes half-closed, with a soft _hm_ noise. “There’s ways to accomplish that _without_ biting, you know.”

The expression of lazy contentment faded and Waverly blinked up at her. “There are?”

Nicole grinned, slow and a little like a cat that’s just spotted a mouse in an unprotected corner. “Oh sure. Takes a bit longer, but something tells me that won’t bother you much.”

Waverly inhaled, slow, and shifted, lifting her hands to slide them into Nicole’s hair. Her fingers carded through tangled red curls, and Nicole leaned into it, her eyes slipping shut as she focused on the sensation of it, the slow, firm touch of her hands. Waverly leaned up, propping herself on one elbow, and kissed along Nicole’s cheek, and her voice was like something out of Eden itself when she murmured the most incredible words Nicole had ever heard.

“Show me?”


	3. Plus a Bonus Blanket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every now and then, the wolf does come in handy.
> 
> Set between Chapter 32 and Chapter 33.

When Nicole saw a text come through, _house is freezing, can I crash with you?_ it didn’t take her long to answer with a firm _yes_. It took even less time, once she heard Waverly's Jeep in the driveway, for her to rescue her frosty girlfriend from the front porch and bundle her up in her bed.

Waverly was trembling with the cold even under Nicole’s quilt, even with Calamity Jane curled up on her other side. Nicole wrapped herself more around her girlfriend, but a cold nose pressed to the bared skin in the v of her collar made her yelp.

“Sorry!” Waverly breathed.

Nicole laughed. “I thought I was the one who’s supposed to have a cold nose.”

“Oh shut up,” Waverly said, but she laughed too. “S-seriously though, I can’t believe how cold it is. The Homestead’s like an i-ice box right now too.”

“Baby, I’m sorry, I’m usually so warm I don’t really, uh, own many blankets.”

“N-no,” Waverly said, too fast, shaking her head as if she could stop her body shuddering by sheer force of will. “It’s okay.”

Nicole held her a little tighter, then made a faint, thoughtful sound.

“Wh-what?”

“Got an idea,” she said, and pulled back enough to meet Waverly’s eyes. “Trust me?”

“Always,” Waverly said, and the immediacy of it, the utter lack of hesitation, filled Nicole with warmth, her chest aching on it. She pressed her lips to Waverly’s in a hard, grateful kiss, noting that if Waverly still tasted off, it was covered by her toothpaste, and then pulled away, stepping onto the floor beside her bed. Waverly watched as she pulled her t-shirt over her head and stripped out of her sweats.

“Like what you see?” Nicole said, a teasing edge to her voice as she noted the flush across Waverly’s face. She ducked her head, rubbing at the back of her neck, and Nicole chuckled, leaning over her to kiss the top of her head. “I don’t mind if you watch.”

“Watch?” she murmured, glancing up again, and as Nicole took a step back, Waverly’s expression changed, her eyes going wide with understanding. She sat up on the bed, crossing her legs like a child at school, intent and deeply curious. Calamity Jane hopped down from the bed and padded out into the hall, perhaps understanding what was coming next. 

Shae had watched Nicole change before, mostly as a sort of supervisor or guide, but having Waverly’s attention on her was a whole other matter. She could feel her gaze like a physical touch, hear her heart beating faster with excitement, and could smell... _well now._

She quirked an eyebrow, and Waverly tilted her head slightly, confused, though she hadn’t stopped blushing.

Changing deliberately was always different from changing under the moon. There was an ease to it, when it was intentional, a melding of man and beast that wasn’t seamless, exactly, but more like a compromise, where the moon inspired a raging, bloody knife-fight as the beast wrestled control away from her. It rippled up her spine, sinuous and impatient, and she tilted her head back, letting out a breath. She could feel her bones twisting and warping under her skin and rolled her head in a slow circle, tense joints popping as her shoulders broadened, her body going heavier with muscle. The sensation of her skin stretching to fit new dimensions was unsettling, but not terrible, and she felt fur growing along her arms, her shoulders, her face.

Her legs creaked warningly and she dropped, knees buckling, doubling over until her palms were braced against the ground. Finally the pain hit and she snarled in the face of it, defiant. It was milder than under a moon but still sharp, burning, her heart and lungs overworking to the point of self-destruction before they warped to suit a larger, heavier body.

And then it was over. The world was all greys and whites and blacks, with a filter of gold over it all, and she shook herself a little, feeling her fur fluff up and then settle, and her tail swept side to side.

Waverly’s feet touched the floor, and then her knees. Nicole looked up into Waverly's face, aware suddenly that she was panting, breathing way too hard in the wake of the transformation. Waverly was breathing a little too fast too, but her eyes were wide in fascination, and maybe also adoration.

“Can I...?” Waverly whispered, and Nicole nodded.

Soft hands slid into the thick ruff around her neck and shoulders, gentle fingers carding through russet fur.

“You’re incredible,” Waverly said, the words breathy and reverent.

Nicole let out a soft whine and pressed her nose into Waverly’s cheek. She laughed, stroking a hand down the length of Nicole’s muzzle, her eyes flitting everywhere, as if she couldn’t take it all in at once.

Nicole nudged her nose against Waverly’s front, pointing her back toward the bed.

Waverly glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, right,” she said, grinning, and stood. She paused, eyeing the bed, then Nicole.

“Hey, baby,” she said, and Nicole slowly stood, half-crouched to keep her head and shoulders from hitting the ceiling. She tilted her head, ears pricked up. “You don’t have to like. Turn in a circle three times before you lay down, right?”

Nicole huffed a breath through her nose, rolled her eyes, and flicked her ears back, the closest thing she could convey to _come on, seriously?_

Waverly laughed, so light and genuine and unguarded that Nicole couldn’t help but give her a big doggy grin, and gathered her up in her paws. That shut her up abruptly, and Waverly’s heart was pounding, not afraid, but impressed, and maybe a little excited.

“Wow,” she whispered, and Nicole flicked an ear, gently laying her back down on the bed. “Right. Sorry.”

Nicole huffed out a laugh and crawled carefully up next to her, curling her body on the bed so that Waverly was cocooned within her arms and legs, Nicole’s thick fur surrounding her.

 _“Oh,”_ she whispered, and Nicole grinned, nosing at her jaw and cheek. “This is perfect.”

Her tail thumped against the bed, and Waverly giggled as Nicole yanked her head up and looked behind her, trying to will the damn thing to stop moving.

“Shh,” Waverly said, and reached up to stroke her hand along Nicole’s nose. “It’s cute.” Nicole grumbled, but settled again, and Waverly pressed her face against Nicole’s chest. “Thank you,” she murmured, but it came out slow, a little absentminded. Now that she was warm and safe against the shelter of Nicole’s body she was already dozing off.

And for just a moment, she thought she could feel the wolf's satisfaction thrumming alongside her own. It wasn't possessive, like she'd feared, but soft, somehow, and oddly gentle compared to the beast's usual urges.

For the first time since she'd been bitten, she wished she could talk to it, _really_ talk to it. If they could just compare notes... maybe they could figure out what the _hell_ was going on with Waverly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still a bit under the weather but I had this sitting around from a few weeks ago. Figured I'd dust it off and share it with ya!


	4. My Furry Valentine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly has been doing research again, this time about holiday traditions...
> 
> (Not tied to a particular timeline.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _My funny valentine_  
>  _Sweet comic valentine_  
>  _You make me smile with my heart..._  
>  "My Funny Valentine" - Chet Baker

Ah, the joy of an early morning shift. The upside was, it was fairly slow, at least in a sleepy town like Purgatory, and she’d be off at 8. Downsides? Getting to work a bit before midnight... and it was fairly slow. The hours crawled by, each second seeming to draw out to cover three. Until half past 7. When an angel in blue jeans, fuzzy boots, and a fur-lined jacket came strolling in through the station’s front doors to save her from her immense boredom.

Except that she was immediately followed by her sister.

“Hey Haught,” Wynonna called out, waving with one hand.

“Hey Wynonna,” she said, though her eyes were on Waverly. Waverly, who smelled like leather and... roses?

She tilted her head to one side, and Waverly heaved a sigh.

“Seriously? You can smell it from there?”

Nicole laughed. “Yeah, Waves, sorry.”

Waverly came through the doorway, revealing a single red rose from behind her back. She did not sulk, exactly, but she did seem to have a little of the air let out of her sails as she crossed the room.

Wynonna leaned in the doorframe with a knowing, sly grin spreading across her face. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Haught.”

Nicole raised an eyebrow, glancing away from Waverly to her sister. “Uh. You too, Wynonna?”

Wynonna grinned, winked, and headed for the BBD door.

“That was odd.”

“She’s really bad at keeping surprises,” Waverly said with a frustrated sniff.

“What?”

Waverly sat on the edge of her desk and offered her the rose. “For you. I figured more than one would be overpowering.”

That, more so even than the gift itself, made her chest feel warm. She took the rose, gently stroking a finger over the soft petals.

“Waverly, that’s. That’s super thoughtful, thank you.”

Waverly beamed. “You’re welcome. I also didn’t get you chocolate, because—”

“Oh no,” Nicole said, starting to laugh.

“—I know those are an allergy risk.”

“ _Waverly._ ”

Waverly grinned, leaning forward from her perch on the desk to kiss the tip of Nicole’s nose. “Kidding, kidding. I have some at home.”

“At home?”

“Mmhm,” Waverly said, her expression turning just slightly sly. “Wynonna’s promised to be busy at work all day.”

Nicole raised both eyebrows. “Is that so.”

“Mm.”

Nicole was not, in general, an untrusting person. Well, not more than a cop and a cult-fearing werewolf needed to be. But even so, any time Wynonna freely offered to give them space, it made her doubtful.

“Why.”

“So, I learned something interesting about the origins of Valentine’s Day,” she said, seemingly as a non sequitur. She crossed one leg over the other, leaning on her knee.

But Nicole knew Waverly. It was _rarely_ a true non sequitur.

“The Saint Valentine story?”

Waverly scoffed and waved a hand. “Psh. That’s holiday lore 101. At this point most academics agree that it’s all a commercial ploy and there was no actual St. Valentine, anyway.”

“All right,” Nicole said, hedging. “So what’s the real origin.”

“Festivals dating back to the early Pagan Roman tradition.”

She bobbed her foot, an almost nervous gesture, until Nicole glanced down at it and she stopped, self-conscious.

“What'd you find, Waves.”

A flush of pink crawled up Waverly’s neck and she cleared her throat. “So it turns out that mid-February was a popular time for festivals for the wolf god Lupercus. It started out as a hunting festival, the Lupercali, but over time it kind of. Uh, well, for lack of a better word, _transformed_ , into a celebration of bestial love and lust. Men would behave like animals, under the guidance of a wolf-speaker, a Lupicinus, and take a lover for themselves.”

“Oh my god.”

“So uh.” Waverly leaned forward, pressing a kiss to Nicole’s cheek, then stayed in place, lowering her hand to rest over Nicole’s belt buckle, her mouth dangerously close to Nicole’s ear. “Happy horny werewolf day, baby.”

“Oh my _god._ ”

Waverly slid her hand just a little lower, and while there wasn't really anyone around to see them, Nicole leaned toward her desk to hide what Waverly's arm was doing.

“ _Waverly_.”

Without any change in her expression to betray her actions, Waverly leaned back with a grin. “So, you get off in 20 minutes?”

“Get off work, yeah.”

“Oh,” Waverly said, and winked, and slid off the desk. “No, I know what I said.”


	5. My Furry Valentine - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to "My Furry Valentine." Waverly had a plan, but not all plans are created equal.
> 
> (Not tied to a particular timeline.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _But don't change a hair for me_  
>  _Not if you care for me_  
>  _Stay, little valentine, stay_  
>  _Each day is Valentine's Day_  
>  "My Funny Valentine" - Chet Baker

Something she had not expected, when she moved to Purgatory, was that she would end up being such a valued member of the Sheriff Department’s team. She had not expected to make a real home here. She had not expected to make friends with people who, though predominately human, actually knew her secret and didn’t hate and fear her for it. She had not expected Nedley to know about her and trust her anyway. And she had certainly never expected to make friends with a supernatural monster-hunter.

She _also_ had not expected to play a bizarre game of musical chairs with her car. Half the time it seemed like she was leaving it in various places around town while being driven around by someone else on the BBD team.

“Want me to drive? Or do you wanna follow me?” Waverly asked as she led the way out of the station, smiling and bouncing on her toes and generally acting as if she had not levied a salacious offer at Nicole just twenty minutes prior, an agonizing twenty minutes before the end of Nicole’s shift.

“Like I’ll be able to focus on staying on the road,” Nicole said, grinning her best wolfish, toothy grin, then abandoning it for a more familiar smile. “If you don’t mind?”

“Like hell I mind,” Waverly said, clicking the key fob for her Jeep to open the doors. Nicole chuckled and climbed in, raking her hands through her hair.

Waverly hopped up into the driver’s seat, gave Nicole’s closer hand a warm squeeze, and got on the road, minding the frosty pavement and the last-minute shoppers who had more of a mind for flowers than for crossing signals.

“Did you have any plans?” Waverly asked. “I don’t mean to steamroll you.”

“Nothing too crazy,” she said, and chuckled. “Figured I’d lose most of the morning to an overdue nap and then make dinner while you were at work, but I guess since you’ve got the day off, it’ll be a group effort.”

Waverly grinned when Nicole winked and waggled her shoulders in a teasing little shimmy. “Threw a wrench in your plans, did I. Mwahaha.”

“Just a little wrench,” Nicole said, pinching her fingers together.

“Oh!” Waverly set a hand to her chest, feigning offense. “How dare you!”

“What about you, miss planner? What’ve you got lined up?”

“Breakfast is all set at the Homestead, just gotta finish cooking it on the griddle, and then I am dragging you upstairs.”

“You assume we’ll get that far up the stairs.”

“We’d _better_ ,” she said, her voice dipping into something that was almost a warning, albeit a joking one. “ _You_ might heal up magically from back strain, but if I have sex on the stairs it’s gonna be hell on my neck.”

Nicole laughed. “All right, all right. What’s on the griddle? Pancakes?”

“Nope!” she said, grinning. “Keep guessing though.”

“Uh.” Nicole pursed her lips, thinking. “French toast?”

“Nope.”

“Is it a breakfast food, or are you just messing with me?”

“Sort of.”

“Waverly.”

Waverly laughed. “Want a hint?”

“Please.”

“It’s a Jewish food.”

“Oh!” Nicole brightened, surprised, then frowned in thought. “A Jewish food made on a griddle.”

Waverly grinned, but just hummed, as if that would prevent her from accidentally giving it away.

“You didn’t.” Waverly grinned. “You made _blintzes?”_

Waverly laughed, triumphant.

“Waverly! Those are so much work, you didn’t have to do that!”

“I wanted to! And trust me,” Waverly said. “There were a _lot_ of messed up crepes I gave to Wynonna and Doc last night while I was figuring what the hell I was doing. Wynonna figured out she could put Nutella on them and the rest was history. Almost literally, actually. In the end I had to fight her for the good ones. Have you ever tried to take food away from a pregnant woman? It’s a disaster.”

Nicole laughed, and didn’t really stop until they got to the Homestead.

 

Nicole had only a handful of memories of her mother making blintzes. The filling wasn’t exactly complicated, but seeing as half the recipe was “make a stack of crepes,” it was a pretty work-intensive dish. Once the pressure from her father away from Jewish traditions really heated up, she just didn’t take the time very often. But Nicole had a few fond memories, most of them at her grandmother’s house, where once or twice a year the griddle came out, along with the special dish that never seemed to get used for anything but storing blintzes overnight in the fridge while everything set. The chilled cheese-filled crepes, which her grandmother had always folded into cubes rather than the more common cylinder-style to help keep the filling from escaping across the griddle, were browned and served with dishes of sour cream, fruit jam, and Nicole’s personal favorite: powdered sugar.

Waverly smelled nothing like her grandmother, but the blintzes smelled about the same, and the memories came back in waves, fierce and strong and warm. The scent of sizzling butter and crepe dough made the Homestead’s little kitchen feel like a bubble of home, transplanted out of her thoughts into the real world.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Nicole murmured, looping her arms around Waverly’s belly and resting her chin on Waverly’s shoulder.

Waverly glanced up at her, then back down to flip another blintz over. “You’re just saying that because I made a deceptively complex food for you.”

“I’m not.”

Waverly laughed. “Then you’re saying that because—”

“Because it’s true,” she said, with a little more force. “Waverly, you always give so much, and then act like it’s not incredible that you did. Not everyone is like that.”

Pink was crawling up Waverly’s ears, and she wouldn’t look up from the griddle. Nicole leaned against the counter next to her, not forcing her eyes up, but speaking, low and insistent.

“You think everyone is like that because you think of what you do as just the standard. The minimum. But it’s not. It’s not the minimum.”

“You do it, though.”

“Do you think I’m putting in the minimum effort?”

“Of course not,” Waverly said, and then frowned.

“Hey.” Nicole reached around Waverly’s back and touched the lid of the canister of powdered sugar, coating her finger in it. “Look at me?”

“Hm?” Waverly said, obediently lifting her face, looking up from her work, just in time for Nicole to dab her finger to the end of Waverly’s nose, coating it in white powder. “Nicole!” she said, protesting, but she was laughing.

Nicole grinned. “You’re amazing. Deal with it.”

Waverly sighed dramatically, an effect mitigated by still having a white-tipped nose, but then she stood up on her toes and bonked her nose into Nicole’s.

“There. Now we’re even.”

“Oh no. No, we’re just getting started.”

 

Three minutes, two slightly-crispier-than-intended blintzes, and one absolutely filthy kitchen later, Nicole had Waverly backed up against the counter, each of them panting for breath and veritably _covered_ in powdered sugar. It was even in Nicole’s hair and down Waverly’s shirt, and she was already dreading the task of running her uniform through the laundry and wiping sugar off her utility belt.

Waverly surveyed Nicole, then glanced down at herself, and offered, “Truce?”

“Truce.”

“Good,” Waverly said, grabbed the open collar of Nicole’s uniform, and dragged her down for a delightfully sweet kiss, licking sugar off Nicole’s lips and pressing their bodies together, ensuring that anything not already covered in sugar would be by the time she was done. Nicole matched her all too readily, caging her against the counter and tangling her hands into Waverly’s hair, ignorant or perhaps just uninterested in the fact that she was getting sugar into her girlfriend’s braid.

Nicole’s grumbling stomach, which had not forgotten the scent of cheese in the air, eventually drove them apart, but only long enough to actually eat the food Waverly had made. When they were finished, Waverly got up again, waving a hand to tell Nicole to stay, and fetched a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries from the fridge, setting it down on the table between them.

“Oh _man_ ,” Nicole said, laughing. “You weren’t kidding about the chocolate.”

“Me, joke about chocolate? Never.”

Nicole grinned, reaching to pick one up, but Waverly nudged her hand away, scooted her chair closer, and set the strawberry between her teeth, offering the other end to Nicole. She laughed, but obliged, carefully biting into it, chuckling when Waverly cursed and yanked a hand up to catch juice dripping between them.

“Didn’t think that through?” Nicole said, laughing, as Waverly dove for a napkin.

“No, I guess not,” she grumbled, and whapped Nicole’s nose with the napkin after she’d wiped off her hand.

“It was a nice thought though,” she murmured, leaning closer to lay a sticky-sweet kiss on Waverly’s mouth, then plucking up another strawberry.

Together they demolished the plate’s offerings, and Nicole licked chocolate from her thumb when they were finished. With a sly little grin, Waverly offered her hand. Nicole took it, and Waverly drew her up from her chair, unbuckling Nicole’s utility belt to leave it on her chair. Getting upstairs was a languid process. Their boots ended up on the ground floor by the steps. Their shirts came off by her bedroom door, and Waverly lay them across the back of her desk chair.

And then Waverly turned around, looked at Nicole, and frowned.

Which, while not an egregious blow to Nicole’s ego, was not usually Waverly’s response to her half-naked girlfriend in her bedroom.

“What’s wrong?”

“Uh.” Waverly frowned more deeply and tugged Nicole further into the room, under the light, and slid out of the way of the window, so that she could see better.

Nicole rolled her shoulders, scratching idly behind her ear. “What is it?”

“Do you itch, baby?”

Nicole huffed out a breath. Now that she’d _said_ that, it was getting worse. “I guess? Why?”

Waverly gently lay two fingers on Nicole’s arm, lifting it to examine her side, then circled around her, her warm, soft fingers touching here and there to move Nicole around.

“Pants off.”

Nicole grunted, but leaned one hand on Waverly’s chair and stripped. “You’re making me nervous.”

Waverly stared once the trousers were set aside, and at her direction, Nicole spun in a circle to let Waverly see her. She scratched at the side of her neck. Damn, but the itching was really getting bad.

“Nicole, do you have any food allergies?”

“No,” she said, and finally looked down, twisting her arms back and forth. “Is that?”

“Stop scratching, baby, I think those are hives. Sit on the bed, okay?”

Being told _not_ to scratch was almost worse than the itch itself. She balled her hands into fists and tried to keep herself from scratching, but as she moved to sit down, her vision paled almost to white, and abruptly Waverly was standing next to her, both arms looped around her.

“Oh my god, baby, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Nicole said, frowning as Waverly moved her to the bed and got her sitting. “Yeah, just. Dizzy, I guess. Thanks.”

Waverly rubbed a hand over her forehead, thinking. “I. Nicole I think I want to take you to the ER.”

Nicole groaned and flopped back on the bed. “This is so not how I wanted to spend today.”

“I know,” Waverly said, chewing on her lip. She bent over Nicole and set her ear to Nicole’s chest, listening. “Your pulse is super weird, baby, I definitely want to take you in.”

“What.”

Waverly focused on getting Nicole into a pair of looser, more comfortable clothes she’d left in one of Waverly’s drawers, and helped her back downstairs.

“Stop that,” she said, for the third time. She was laughing, a little, even as she pulled Nicole’s hand away from her arm.

“I’m sorry,” Nicole said, frustrated. “I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

“I know, baby. Here.” She offered Nicole a pair of heavy mittens, which Nicole looked at, sighed, and accepted, bundling up her hands in them. “But if you start scratching with your foot, I swear, I’m getting video.”

“ _Waverly._ ”

If having her hands bundled up in mittens wasn’t bad enough, being buckled into the front seat of the Jeep like a child was flat-out demoralizing. And even then, for the whole drive to the hospital Nicole squirmed beneath her seatbelt, trying to rub her shoulders against the back of the seat.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Waverly muttered, half under her breath.

“What doesn’t?”

“You’re not _really_ showing symptoms of Theobromine poisoning, except maybe the irregular heartbeat, but nothing else that you’ve had today should have had any effect on you.”

Nicole frowned, and something in the tone of Waverly’s voice made her afraid to ask. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Theobromine.”

Waverly bit her lip as she pulled into a parking space, looking very much like she were trying not to laugh.

“Waverly.”

“It’s a compound in chocolate. Humans can metabolize it really easily, but.”

“ _You have got to be kidding me._ ”

“I looked it up the other day! But you said chocolate was all right, so I didn’t think about it again. Have you had chocolate since you were bitten?”

Nicole frowned, wracking her brain as Waverly unbuckled her and they headed inside. Shae had never offered it, and living with Mikael had been an exercise in odd living in general, so she hadn’t really thought about it. And then after she got to Purgatory, she just hadn’t really ever been craving it, and hadn’t tried any.

“I guess not, no.”

“You might be allergic, baby, I’m so sorry.”

“I cannot believe this,” she grumbled.

The ER staff, at least, seemed to think the whole thing was absolutely hilarious. Someone allergic, possibly to chocolate, showing up on Valentine’s Day, was apparently the highlight of their holiday shift. And so what felt like hours later, Nicole found herself lying in a hospital cot, waiting for antihistamines to kick in, and itching worse than when she’d had chicken pox as a kid.

“Waverly.” Nicole squinted her eyes, trying to see past the bright fluorescents overhead and squirming, rubbing her back against the sheets like a dog rolling around on carpet. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“What?” Waverly leaned into her sphere of vision. “Don’t be silly, you don’t need to apologize. I’m the one who gave you the chocolate.”

“I know, but this... I mean I know that you went into this with your eyes open, but spending Valentine’s Day in the emergency room because your—” She hastily lowered her voice, “ _Werewolf girlfriend_ is allergic to chocolate, is not exactly standard relationship drama.”

“I don’t care,” Waverly said, chuckling. “Don’t forget all the stupid shit you get dragged into just because I’m an Earp.”

“I guess.”

Waverly leaned closer and kissed Nicole’s forehead. “It’s okay.”

“All right,” she said, sighing. “But Waverly?”

“Hm?”

She glowered at the ceiling. “I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything, baby.”

“You _cannot_ tell Wynonna.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grevlis my friend, you asked for the aftermath, but let it be known that I am sometimes a big troll. ;P


	6. Alternate Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during/after chapter 71.

“Waverly!” Nicole screamed, flailing her leg out to try to catch Shae’s head. “ _Waverly!”_

Shae dragged Waverly’s body a few more feet from Nicole, laughing that low, coughing, barking sort of wolf laugh as she did it. Nicole kicked her foot out again but she couldn’t reach, Shae was too far away. Nicole reached for the blade tethering her hand to the car, but grasping at it made fire and agony flare through her pinned hand all the way up to her elbow and burned her fingers as she tried to get her free hand around it to pull out the knife.

“ _Waverly!”_

Shae brought her head down, fangs flashing in the purple-red light of twilight, and Nicole forced herself to watch.

It was a cacophony of sound, chaos and confusion in the space of seconds. The sick, wet impact of a werewolf’s teeth tearing through Waverly’s jacket to pierce into her neck and shoulder. Waverly _screamed_ and Nicole thought she might have been screaming too, but Waverly smeared vervain all over Shae’s nose while she was in range, too, and so then there was even more noise, as Shae _roared_ in pain and frustration, the sound half-muffled and dulled where her mouth was still buried in Waverly’s body.

Then Shae ripped herself away, tearing out a sizeable chunk of muscle and skin and something that _flopped_ , falling free of her jaws in a wet, rubbery _smack_. Shae ran, cackling like a hyena, though she was sneezing and rubbing at her face as she went, the vervain still on her nose.

Nicole was only barely aware of Shae fleeing the scene. Waverly was choking, making horrible gurgling noises, her body bucking and shaking where she lay on the ground. Nicole scrabbled at the knife again and by force of will or maybe just terror she got herself free, her hand burning and bleeding, but she fell to her knees. Her back _ached_ where she’d hit her car, and she crawled forward.

“Waverly,” she whispered, and leaned over Waverly’s body, trying to assess the damage. The bite was bad. There was blood coating the torn skin around the gaping wound and more spilled out with every pulse of Waverly’s heart. Nicole tried to figure out where to put her hands to staunch the bleeding but there was nowhere to get good leverage and her own blood was mixing into the gore from her ruined right hand and there was just so much _damage_.

And then Waverly made a sound that sent a chill down Nicole’s spine.

She _snarled_.

Not the weak, hollow, human imitation that she’d heard Bobo make but something real. Guttural and grinding, the kind of sound hikers heard in their nightmares.

Waverly’s hands snapped up and grasped around Nicole’s wrists, ironclad and strong, stronger than Waverly should have been.

Shocked and weakened by silver, Nicole fell back when Waverly writhed and twisted and _pushed_ her away. Nicole sat on the ground, her heart pounding in her chest, rabbit-fast and deafening even to her own ears.

Waverly turned over onto her hands and knees and coughed out a mouthful of blood. It splattered against the grass and the dirt and as Nicole watched, the skin of Waverly’s neck started to knit back together, her ruined trachea bubbling and forming out of nothing, regenerating before Nicole’s very eyes.

Waverly growled, the sound tearing out of her ruined, healing throat like the roar of an engine and she convulsed, her spine rippling and contorting. She reared back onto her knees and reached over her head, grasping at her jacket and her shirt and tearing them off with nails that were too long, too dark, too sharp. Those nails gouged bright red lines into her back, ripping into the skin like it was tissue paper. She screamed, the sound horrible and too loud and too animal, and where her skin had split there was wet, sticky fur poking out. Her face twisted, contorted as her skull changed shape, and she ripped at her cheeks and forehead with her claws, tearing off her skin to reveal fur and fangs beneath.

Nicole almost couldn’t see through her tears as she watched Waverly change, watched her wolf tear free for the first time.

Had this been what it looked like, when Shae bit her in the hospital? Or was she so sedated then that her wolf had been born docile, where Waverly’s was born in conflict and fear?

Waverly sloughed off the bits of cloth and ruined flesh and shook herself, her soft brown fur damp and matted and soaked in blood.

Gold eyes snapped left to focus on Nicole, and Waverly _roared_ , bellowing challenge and fury with all her fangs showing, and leapt on top of her, pinning Nicole to the earth.

“Please!” Nicole screamed, pushing at Waverly’s shoulders and face. She wasn’t as big as Nicole or Shae could get, but she was compact and dense, heavy with muscle and primal rage. “Waverly! Baby, it’s _me!”_

“You _let this happen!”_ Waverly roared, and her claws dug into Nicole’s body, lethally sharp and tearing into her skin like it was nothing.

 

Nicole woke up confused and terrified and choked on a scream before she could actually make any sound. Honey was clawing the sheets off before she’d even fully realized she’d gotten tangled up in them, and then they were standing and stumbling around the foot of her bed to the bathroom door. Her whole body was roiling with leftover fear and horror and guilt and she could feel Honey’s anguish and fear mingling and clashing with her own. She lurched into the bathroom, leaving a few claw marks in the wall in the process until she could drop to her knees, fumble at the lid of the toilet, and empty her stomach.

Pounding footsteps echoed the throbbing headache that was chasing her out of bed.

“Nicole!” Waverly said, in that tone that said Nicole hadn’t heard it the first two times, and then Waverly was kneeling behind her, brushing Nicole’s hair back with her fingers. Waverly’s body was warm and soft where it pressed against her back. “Oh my god, baby, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Nicole trembled, her whole body shaking. Operating on instinct, or maybe on Honey’s guidance, she reached up and back to curl her fingers around Waverly’s arm, gripping tight to remind herself—no, to remind _both_ of them—that it _wasn’t_ real, it hadn’t happened. Waverly was _there_ , and _human_.

“Just a dream,” she whispered, and shut her eyes. “Oh _god_ , it was just a dream...”

“Oh, Nicole,” Waverly breathed and wrapped the arm Nicole wasn’t clutching like a lifeline around Nicole’s shoulders, hugging her close, so that Nicole wasn’t on her knees so much as half-sitting in Waverly’s lap. She pulled the arm Nicole was holding up so she could stroke her fingers through Nicole’s hair and then kissed the top of Nicole’s head. “Shh, it’s okay, it’s all over now.”

“I—”

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice so achingly gentle that Nicole felt a little of the tension leech away with her words. “It’s okay, I’m right here.”

Nicole tried to speak, her throat tight on a stifled sob, “I dreamed you were—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she murmured, as patient as the earth itself.

“I dreamed Shae bit you,” she whispered, and Waverly went very still beneath her, her fingers freezing in Nicole’s hair for a moment before resuming their motion with new purpose. “I– I watched you change and I couldn’t... I couldn’t _do_ anything.”

Waverly shifted, moving so that Nicole’s head slipped a little down her chest and Waverly could look down into Nicole’s eyes.

“I’m right here,” she said. “And I’m just me. That didn’t happen.”

“I know, but—”

“But if it _had_ ,” Waverly said, and kissed Nicole’s forehead. “Let’s just say there’d be a... _silver_ lining.”

Nicole blinked up at her. “What?”

“Two werewolves against one?” Waverly said, and winked. “I like those odds.”


	7. (you’re gonna wish you never had met me) rolling in the deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension mounts during Waverly's brief window of freedom from her "passenger"...
> 
> Set between Chapter 41 and Chapter 42.

The archway was bitter cold. Wind blew in across the heavy, unbroken snow, and where Waverly and Doc walked, they left deep pockmarks on the smooth surface. The air smelled like something, which surprised her. It was a crisp scent. Sharp and clean, somehow, like the pavement on a country road after a heavy rain. But different, somehow.

“Waverly?” Doc asked.

She turned, startled. “Huh?”

“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing with his car keys.

“Oh,” she said. “Sure.”

Doc led the way back to his car and settled into the driver’s seat. As she climbed in on the other side Waverly finally felt a fraction of the pressure ease off her shoulders. But she still felt heavy. Like there was something sitting on top of her head, scrunching her spine into a tightly coiled spring. Like the time Mama had balanced a book on Willa’s stretched-out Slinky to press it back to its usual shape. She still felt a little rattled from the conversation with Juan Carlo, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

Doc jabbed buttons on his stereo, grumbling under his breath.

“What, don’t like the stations?” she asked.

He blinked owlishly at her and frowned. “Not in particular.”

“Here,” she said, and plucked up a cable from her purse to plug her phone into his stereo. “I think I’ve got something you might like.”

Doc pursed his lips, mustache quivering, but waved a hand in acquiescence and set a hand to the gearshift to head back onto the road. He started up a low rumble of general disapproval as he drove, which turned into a quiet running commentary against the snow on the road, the ice, the speed limits, and Juan Carlo’s conundrum as to what they could possibly offer the Order.

She scrolled through her library to the album she wanted and her thumb fell on _Love in the Dark_. Doc’s grumbling abruptly stopped as Adele’s crooning alto filled the car. He kept his eyes on the road but she could see he was listening closely. She listened too, paying attention to the lyrics more than usual.

“ _Don’t come any closer, don’t try to change my mind. I’m being cruel to be kind..._ ”

Waverly winced and reached for her phone to pick a different track. “Oh geez, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s all right, Waverly,” Doc murmured, and Waverly froze. She’d never heard him sound quite like that, soft and sort of thoughtful. “Leave it on.”

She nodded, and settled back in her seat, letting the song play through to the end. It continued to the next track in the album, and she left it running for the whole ride back to the Purgatory police station.

“What is this?” Doc asked finally, as she unplugged her phone and climbed out of his new car. “I mean who’s that, singin’?”

“Her name’s Adele,” Waverly said. “I’ll get you a few of her CDs, if you like it.”

He flashed her one of his trademark crooked grins. “I do indeed, Miss Waverly. I do indeed.”

She grinned and pocketed her phone, and he led the way inside. Nicole wasn’t at her desk, and it looked like Nedley was in his office, but when they headed into BBD’s office, she frowned, wrinkling her nose at the acrid, burning odor of industrial cleaners. She grimaced, slowing down a bit even as Doc stopped alongside her.

“Hoo,” he muttered, rubbing a hand under his nose. “What in the hell...”

Waverly followed the scent and noticed Dolls dressed in goggles, painter’s coveralls, and blue hospital-style shoe-covers over his boots. Behind him was a headless corpse wearing Lucado’s clothing and a frankly _inordinate_ amount of black goo coating the walls. He was actively scrubbing the doorjamb, wiping goo from the wood, but he looked up when she gasped.

“Oh Dolls,” she breathed. “You _didn’t._ ”

Dolls turned around to survey the scene behind him, as if he’d forgotten what was there. The clinging scent of death and the beginnings of some kind of chemically or possibly supernaturally advanced decomposition was cloyingly sweet and clogging her nose. It wasn’t _unpleasant_ to her, exactly, which set off a tiny warning bell in the back of her mind, but it was _strong_. She covered her mouth with one hand, focusing on the faint, human scent of her own fingers to try to block out the rest.

He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead and turned back around. “Of course not,” he said, keeping his voice soft but firm. “Whoa. No, no, of course not. She...” He stepped forward and let out a tiny breath as a sigh. “Touched the goo. And it turns out she wasn’t as resilient as you.”

“Or it’s getting stronger,” she said, unable to pull her eyes away from Lucado’s lifeless corpse. She heard Doc pull his hat off behind her in a gesture of courtesy.

“Mictian,” Dolls said, his voice tight. “Its name is Mictian.”

“Like that time I put a can of pasta in the microwaver,” Doc muttered.

“ _Doc!”_ she protested, turning toward him and gesturing toward the office for emphasis. “She was a _human being_. Wait.” She frowned and looked to Dolls again, brain working furiously. “Where did she get some goo?”

Dolls flapped his mouth a couple times, looking for words, and then gestured toward the center of the BBD space. “C’mere.”

“We didn’t find anythin’ other than more questions,” Doc said, adjusting his hat back on his head. “Juan Carlo paid us a visit.”

“Great,” Dolls muttered. “That’s what we need.” He stopped in front of a table with a heavy book open on the surface. Waverly thought she remembered it. A compendium about plant compounds and apothecary notes. Why was Dolls reading that? “Okay,” he said. “So I found this compound that uh, shocks the nervous system, right? It makes the demon think that it’s in a dying body, and then it abandons it.”

“But then what?” Waverly asked, looking between the two men. “I mean, Wynonna won’t be able to fire Peacemaker to kill it.”

“Well,” Doc said, with an infuriatingly calm confidence that she didn’t believe in for a second, “Between my revolvers and his pistol we can slow it down, though.”

“Did you _see_ the tentacle last time?” she demanded, tension creeping into her voice and dragging it up to a higher pitch and decibel without her permission. “I mean, no offense to your _pistol_ , but it won’t leave a scratch _._ ”

“Waverly,” Dolls said, his voice snapping out, harsh and commanding. “Just look around you, okay? We gotta get this thing out of Wynonna. Fast.”

She let out a harsh, heavy breath and pulled away, her gaze lingering on the book. What he was suggesting was a near-perfect plan, but if they couldn’t kill the demon after it left Wynonna, it would only barely be a victory.

“How we doin’ on ingredients?” Doc asked Dolls as she headed for the hall. She couldn’t think with them hovering around her, and she headed for the holding cell, hoping that seeing Wynonna again would help her think faster.

When Waverly stepped into the dark stone box in which Wynonna was being kept, her sister lurked forward from the back of the cell. Her eyes were dark, so dark, like endless pits of blackness and despair. Had Waverly looked like that, when the demon took over? Eerie and cold, deadly and furious?

Wynonna—no, Mictian—grinned. “Had a chance to regroup with your ginger _Pup_ -Tart?” the demon murmured, and silvery fear flickered through Waverly’s stomach, fluttering like butterflies of pure anxiety. “I might’a caused some trouble,” the demon purred, and giggled, proud of itself.

“We’re running out of time,” Waverly said, trying not to think about the demon having had access to all of her knowledge, all of her thoughts. Knowledge was power. How much stronger had it become, just by being in Waverly’s head for seven weeks?

“She’s a _boring_ cop,” Mictian insisted. “You. Are not boring.”

Waverly narrowed her eyes, just a little.

“I don’t wanna ruin the surprise,” Mictian said. “But you’ve got dark corners that you haven’t explored yet.”

Waverly thought of how sharp and strong the smell of cold snowy air and of death had been in her nose. _You’re not even an Earp_. She shook her head, driving those thoughts off for now, and tried not to notice that Mictian was waggling Wynonna’s eyebrows suggestively at her. Waverly could deal with that later. When this was over.

“I’m not enough to save you, Wynonna,” she said, the words coming out hollow as she realized how true they were.

Mictian’s smile faded and the demon sighed. The sound, coming from Wynonna’s mouth, was so weirdly familiar, yet horribly alien. “Okay. Are we having a moment?”

A thought struck. Wynonna was still inside there. And Waverly couldn’t save her.

“Hey,” she whispered. “But you’re enough to save me.”

“Huh?” the demon muttered. “No, if you’re gonna sob, you’re gonna have to sob louder.”

“I trust you,” Waverly whispered.

“What?” the demon demanded, leaning Wynonna’s face through the bars.

_There was her chance._

She grabbed Wynonna by the back of the head, forcing her to stay close against the metal bars. She ignored the demon’s startled shout of pain. Waverly lifted Peacemaker, pressing the gun to Wynonna’s cheek. The metal sizzled where it met skin, smoke pouring off her sister’s face, and the demon _bellowed_ , making an unearthly noise that was half human scream, half terrible, growling roar.

“There is only one way to make it stop and you _know what it is_ , Mictian!”

The demon met Waverly’s eyes directly, its scream fading out as it grit Wynonna’s teeth and stared out through the bars.

Waverly leaned a little closer and held her lips just a fraction of an inch from Wynonna’s. Black smoky fog issued out of Wynonna’s mouth, absorbing into Waverly’s, and she dropped Peacemaker just as Wynonna fell back, slumping to the ground in a dizzy, dazed heap.

The demon swept through Waverly’s mind and seized control from her as suddenly and as soundly as if they were piloting a plane and it had bodily torn her away from the console. It seared across her thoughts, a hellfire inferno, scalding her like a flood of boiling water washing over and then past her.

“ _Ahhh_. Waverly Earp,” it murmured, with her mouth, and Waverly felt like she was drowning in bubbling darkness. “You _crafty_ fox.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What you need to know about this particular b-side is that I've been sitting on the "ginger pup-tart" pun for _months._
> 
> I'll be at ClexaCon this weekend! Come find me at the WE meetup or throughout the weekend. I'll probably be tweeting about it some on my Twitter (@lexraevision) and you can probably ID me by a silvergrey mohawk, too. Hope to see you there!


	8. I Won't Say (I'm In Love)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting the horrors that escaped into the Triangle didn't stop just because Black Badge ghosted, and Doc isn't the only one who got tired of not being able to kill anything...
> 
> Set between Chapter 57 and Chapter 58, several days after "[the glint of light on broken glass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12802839)." (Though that isn't required reading!)

Nicole lay on her bed, her feet planted solid and firm on the floor like the support pillars of an old Roman aqueduct. Waverly looked at her, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe and for a moment, just enjoying the view.

“You okay?” Waverly asked, when Nicole hadn’t moved or spoken for almost a full minute. She was simply... still. Quiet. As if she was lost in thought, just staring at the ceiling.

“Hm?” Nicole murmured. She didn’t move, except for the brief rise and fall of her chest as she spoke. For a moment, Waverly thought she could hear the slow, thumping beat of Nicole’s heart. A rolling, languid drum that was almost too slow, too calm.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Waverly asked. She moved into the room, standing beside her prone girlfriend. Nicole looked comfortable, lounging sideways across the surface of her bed, her short red hair sprawled out around her head in a fiery fan. It reminded Waverly of a stage production she’d seen once, where scraps of red and orange tissue paper lit by tiny lamps simulated roaring flames.

“Just settling,” Nicole said. She sounded distant, thoughtful.

Waverly looked at her, taking in the slant of her lips, the delicate arcs of her eyebrows. She wasn’t tense, exactly, but she wasn’t relaxed either. There were subtle creases at the corners of her eyes, a stiffness in her fingers where they rested on the bedspread. Waverly had learned, over the last few months, that Nicole was not everything she had first seemed to be. When they met, Waverly had assessed Nicole as a consummate professional, an officer of the law, and a go-getter. When Nicole had introduced herself in Shorty’s she’d been precise, proper, straitlaced, and above all, patient. She had given Waverly her business card, and though she’d stayed nearby, friendly and warm, she’d never pushed. And all of those things were true, of course. That face Nicole showed to the world was still there.

But she was also so much more.

Waverly wondered, privately, how much was the influence of the wolf, and how much was just what Nicole had always been. Whichever was the cause, in private Nicole always gave off a feeling of leashed energy, of a dam threatening to break. There was so much power in her, and she kept it carefully muzzled, but tonight there was something electric about her. Tonight, Nicole reminded Waverly of a pint poured too high at Shorty’s—filled until the head was a mere wisp away from breaking its own surface tension and spilling down the sides of the glass.

“Where’d you go, baby?” Waverly asked, leaning her thigh against the edge of the mattress, her leg just barely touching Nicole’s knee. Warmth radiated off her, as usual, and Waverly soaked it in. Nicole made a soft sound. Acknowledgement, but not an answer, exactly. “Is this about that Rawhead we were hunting?”

“No,” Nicole said, then paused, brow furrowing by a fraction as she reconsidered the question. She still hadn’t moved, not even to look at Waverly directly. “Yes. Sort of?”

Waverly hummed, her own acknowledgement, and before she could second-guess herself she threw her leg over Nicole’s body, settling in Nicole’s lap. Her knees tucked in close to Nicole’s sides to balance, though she knew that comparatively she was a fraction of Nicole’s weight. What nobody talked about with lycanthropes is how _dense_ they are. They’re built tough and heavy, like trucks. Even the ones that maintain the willowy, lithe grace of their human selves.

Nicole’s hands moved, idle and unthinking, drawn by a pull they both felt but couldn’t name, until they settled on Waverly’s hips. The touch was light, but Waverly knew it wouldn’t take much for her grip to become firm, controlling, and it sent a frisson of raw, electric sensation through her. Nicole’s gaze flicked up and Waverly watched her eyes flash golden just for a moment, as Nicole took in the sight of Waverly above her. _Take that romance novel clichés,_ Waverly thought, smug as can be. _I don’t need to watch for her eyes to dilate. She’s so much more obvious than that._

“Hey Honey,” Waverly teased.

Nicole breathed out a laugh and winked. “Yeah well, you bring her out in me. In a good way.”

Waverly smiled, because who _wouldn’t_ when a gorgeous redhead was beneath you and looking at you with that barely disguised mix of animal lust and pure, helpless affection. Nicole shifted, her hips arching up into Waverly in a fitful, maybe unconscious gesture, though her feet stayed flat on the floor. It may not have been intentional, but it only served to show off her strength. Waverly rolled with her, like riding a bucking horse, to keep her balance and maintain her perch over Nicole’s body. She could only imagine what she looked like, her own body arcing and straining with the effort not to fall over, but by the expression on Nicole’s face, she must not have looked all that bad.

With effort, Waverly pushed all that aside and schooled her expression to something softer, more concerned. “Talk to me,” she said, curling her fingers into the broad leather band of Nicole’s belt and tugging for emphasis. “You seem tense. More than usual.”

Nicole bit her lip, her eyes tracking down to Waverly’s fingers where they curled around her belt before slipping closed for a breath, then two. It never failed to impress Waverly, how in tune with herself Nicole could be. How in control she could be. Compared to the raw, chaotic struggle on display every time she changed shape, it was strange to witness. When Nicole opened her eyes again she was a little calmer, and her mouth twisted in a frown.

“Told you I wasn’t much good with thinking aloud.”

“Don’t think then,” Waverly murmured. “Feel. Tell me.”

“She’s hungry,” Nicole said. She said it slowly, though not because she was thinking carefully about her choice of words. Nicole was following Waverly’s advice, though Waverly would be hard pressed to say how she knew it. There was something in the set of Nicole’s mouth, something in the way her lips moved around the words, like she was tasting it, _savoring_ it. “It’s been so long since we– since she killed something. Since before the Redcaps, and then those grindylows...” She trailed off, making a noise deep in her chest like a rumble of disapproval, or maybe of desire. Waverly felt it thrumming in Nicole’s body through her hips and legs.

It was an incredibly strange sensation, but not an unpleasant one, if she was being honest. And _hugely_ distracting. She forced her brain to re-focus.

“And the Lampades,” Waverly mused. “I think I get it.”

“I want... no, I mean, she.” Nicole frowned, thinking again. “No. I think it’s both of us.”

Waverly raised an eyebrow at that, but Nicole wasn’t looking at her, more looking past her, her mind somewhere else.

“It’s been a long time since we beat something.” Nicole narrowed her eyes, the rumble in her chest getting a little louder, a little stronger. “God, I want to.”

Waverly said nothing. What _could_ she say to that? She was surrounded by violent, fierce people. Hell, her sister was _Wynonna Earp_ , after all. But Nicole was so rarely given to wanton bloodlust that it was a little strange. A little scary, too.

“But I also don’t,” Nicole said, with a faint, strained sound that Waverly decided was a groan, as if just voicing that conflicting desire took immense effort. “I don’t have to be that, and I know that. So I was trying to... to just be me, I guess.”

“Be you? What do you mean?”

Nicole frowned, looking for words. “It’s something Mikael taught me a long time ago,” she said. Her voice didn’t catch on his name, this time, which made Waverly smile. “I guess it’s like meditation. Just existing, taking a moment to notice the little things.”

“Mindfulness,” Waverly said.

“Yeah.” Nicole let out a long, low breath. “It’s hard, when she wants more. But wolves, or whatever she is, aren’t really compatible with rational, abstract thought. With human stillness.”

“Mm,” Waverly said, running her fingers along the hem of Nicole’s shirt. It had come loose when she was tugging on Nicole’s belt, and now one of the ends was untucked, and an idea was coming together in her mind. “So when you think human thoughts...”

“It helps push her down and bring me forward,” Nicole said, nodding. “So I focus on patterns, or on details. Things she has trouble with.”

“Like counting breaths,” Waverly suggested.

“That’s one, yeah,” Nicole said. “Or—”

Nicole broke off with a hollow, startled gasp as Waverly slid one hand under the free tail of her shirt, finding warm, soft skin with the tips of her fingers.

“Or this?” Waverly prompted.

“Jesus, Waverly,” Nicole said, the words coming on a low groan.

“Or?” she murmured again, keeping her tone light and teasing.

“Or noticing how things feel,” Nicole said, jaw tight. She shuddered as Waverly’s fingers strayed, untucking the other side of her shirt. “Consciously, I mean.”

“Cataloguing each one,” Waverly said.

“Yeah.”

Waverly undid the lowest button of Nicole’s shirt with her free hand, bending to press a feather-light kiss to the bared triangle of skin there. She watched the muscles under her hand bunch and tense. Waverly could see Nicole was torn between wanting to move and wanting to stay perfectly still, and she loved it.

“Catalogue _that_ ,” Waverly murmured, her lips brushing Nicole’s skin.

“Jesus,” Nicole said, though it came out a bit huskier than before.

The thought that she was riling up a creature with violent, even homicidal urges crossed her mind and Waverly hesitated, fingers stalling on the next button of Nicole’s shirt. _Maybe this was a mistake._

“This– ah, I mean, this is okay, right?”

Nicole breathed out a laugh, and she finally moved, sitting up on her elbows so she could look down at Waverly’s face. Her eyes were a warm, golden brown, and soft with something that Waverly didn’t quite dare to put a word to. Her hair fell around her face in errant, mussed curls, and Waverly sat up in her lap a little more, fighting down the urge to run her fingers through Nicole’s hair.

“I mean,” Waverly said, the words spilling out in a rush. “I don’t want to make it worse. If she’s. Uh. Hungry.”

Nicole grinned and freed a hand to reach out and brush a lock of hair away from Waverly’s forehead. Waverly leaned into it, relishing the heat of Nicole’s palm resting against her cheek.

“Won’t make it worse, no,” she murmured, though her voice was low and had just a touch of a growl lingering underneath it. Heat flickered through Waverly’s body, roaring through her limbs electric and snapping. She thought suddenly of how Nicole had sounded in Nedley’s office, back at the start, when Waverly had said _I really, really don’t know how to do this_.

She’d never admitted it to anyone, not even really to herself, but that low, rumbling _oh sure you do_ had featured in more dreams than she could count, after that night.

Waverly wasn’t sure what her face had looked like just then, but before she was even quite aware of what was happening, Nicole rolled them over. She pinned Waverly to the bed with her hips and set her hands on the bed, her arms forming a cage around Waverly’s shoulders. For a moment Waverly couldn’t breathe, though it had nothing to do with impact. She just stared up at Nicole, panting and a bit dazed. Nicole leaned over her, a sly smile curling her mouth, and the backlighting of Nicole’s bedside lamp threw her face into sharp relief, highlighting her wolfish smile and killer dimples.

Waverly considered moving, considered employing her admittedly very minimal BBD-training in hand-to-hand to flip her girlfriend back over onto her back and retake control. But being realistic, if Nicole had a mind to keep her pinned, Waverly would have had better luck flipping over the bed. Or even a car.

“I do so love that look on your face,” Nicole murmured, still all gravel and growl, and Waverly inhaled, sharp, fidgeting unconsciously.

There were days when her strange, unexplainably better senses scared her. When she smelled blood and hellfire in such crystalline clarity that she almost, _almost_ believed she could really be a demon. But there were other days where it wasn’t so bad. Like right now. Waverly would accept being a demon if it meant being able to sense Nicole like this. Because like this, bent over Waverly in a hunter’s crouch, full of hungers both supernatural and mundane, Nicole smelled incredible. Like woodsmoke and coffee and sex.

“Well now,” Nicole said, though she hadn’t raised her voice, as if she knew full well what it was doing to Waverly, as if she was tracking the way every word that rolled off her tongue in that low, gravelly burr made Waverly squirm beneath her, desperate and wanting. “What, couldn’t stomach what you were dishin’ out?”

“God, Nicole,” Waverly mumbled, and she didn’t need a thermometer to know she was burning inside, fever-hot and restless. She curled her fingers into the bedspread, bunching it in her hands. By now this was a familiar game, toying with each other to see who’d crack first, who’d give in first. Considering one of them had a literal animal inside, Waverly would’ve thought the game would get boring, but Nicole was, after all, so very much a creature of restraint.

“Hm?”

“Wanted you since I saw you lying here all still.”

“That so.”

“Mmhm.” Waverly bit down on her lip and tilted her head back against the bed, watching Nicole through heavy-lidded eyes. Nicole’s gaze snapped down to the long, pale column of Waverly’s throat, her eyes flashing brighter again, a low rumbling noise clicking in her chest. Waverly was playing dirty, but hey, she played to win.

“Why’s that.”

“Why do you think?” Waverly asked, letting out a low, soft laugh that dragged a faint groan from Nicole. She fixed her gaze on Waverly’s mouth. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re fucking gorgeous, baby.”

Nicole laughed that warm, louder laugh, the one that only came out when she was startled by it, and it made Waverly grin. To hell with the physical. Making Nicole laugh, genuine and light, was one of the greatest pleasures in the whole world. Taking that laugh as a momentary truce, Waverly reached up, stroking one hand through Nicole’s hair and looping the other around the back of her neck. Nicole beamed, leaning into Waverly’s hand, mirroring their earlier position. There was an ease to it, a gentleness that Waverly loved.

“You are _so pretty_ ,” Waverly said, overenunciating the words.

“Oh don’t you dare,” Nicole said, but she was laughing.

“And I like you _so much_.”

“Waverly!” Nicole protested, but there was no heat in it, just laughter. Nicole ducked her head, pressing her nose into the curve of Waverly’s neck. Waverly was laughing too, and wrapped her arms around Nicole’s shoulders. Nicole’s lips pressed to the hollow of her throat, a reflex, and Waverly hummed, pleased. Nicole slid down onto her side, next to Waverly, not pinning her anymore, but simply relaxing. “Needed this, I think.”

“Won’t ever stop you from being you when you need it, baby,” Waverly murmured, and pressed a kiss to Nicole’s forehead. “But I’m here, too.”

“Yeah,” Nicole said, and Waverly could feel the smile where it curved against her skin. “Yeah, I know.”

Words flared through her chest, sudden and hot and insistent, but they stalled at the tip of her tongue. It would be so easy. It was just three words. _I love you._ She’d already said it once, technically. To Wynonna, but it almost counted, right?

But they were also so _permanent_ , and for all her fearlessness, for all her strength, it scared the absolute shit out of her.

So she closed her mouth, and held Nicole close, and tried not to think about anything in particular. It was scary. It _had been_ scary for months, really. What she felt for Nicole was... it was a lot. All-consuming, at times, and quiet, at others. Constant and strong, like a river, pulling always in the same direction, fiercely in some places where the water frothed white into rapids and stalwart in others, where the surface was placid and calm.

Love was the only word that seemed to encompass the breadth of it, but Waverly’s history with that word was. Well, it was complicated.

She’d loved her family, of course.

Her mother left when she was four, her father and abusive sister were dead and presumed dead when she was six. Her older sister a wreck for twelve years and then gone, a whisper in the wind, for three.

She’d loved Champ, or she’d thought she had, and look where that got her.

She’d loved her work, even when it was frustrating, even when it was a poor replacement for being the Heir.

She’d loved her schoolwork, even when Champ and Stephanie had mocked her for it.

She’d loved her friends, even though half of them were fake and the other half were probably just too nice to leave her by herself.

And now she loved Nicole.

A werewolf.

God, it sounded like the punchline to a joke that had been in the telling for her entire life, but there it was, all the same. She loved Nicole, so much it made her chest ache, so much it made her throat tight when she thought about it.

She pushed the thoughts away and focused. What had Nicole said? Details. She focused on the silk-thread sensation of Nicole’s hair where Waverly slid her fingers through it. She focused on the warmth of Nicole’s breath on her throat, the heat of her where their skin touched at forehead, cheek, forearms, wrists. Nicole’s hand was resting on the bare diamond of skin across Waverly’s belly, her fingers tangled in the hem. She focused on the hard-soft line of Nicole’s nose where it rested against her jaw, on the cloth of Nicole’s shirt where the collar touched Waverly’s shoulder.

“Where’d you go, baby,” Nicole murmured, flipping the script on her, but she hadn’t moved.

“Hm,” Waverly murmured, and kissed Nicole’s forehead again. “Nowhere. Just thinkin’ about you.”

Nicole chuckled against her skin and propped herself up on one elbow. “Funny,” she murmured. “I was thinkin’ ‘bout you too.”


	9. Do the Math

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is dedicated to Jace (even though I'm pretty sure you don't read this story) and your comment about how linguistics and fluency works, from back when we were watching season 1. It's been sitting in the back of my head for _months_ , dude. MONTHS.
> 
> Also, [Boo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaggerHeda/pseuds/BaggerHeda), I absolutely blame the angstfest part of this on you. :P
> 
> Set after Chapter 72.

The funny thing about policework is that everyone thinks the fewer people are involved, the fewer disputes there will be. But the math rarely checks out, and the equation for the amount of trouble for any given population tended to be anywhere from _n plus 1_ to _n times 3_ , depending on a number of factors ranging from recent traffic pileups and what sports are in season to the local diagnoses numbers for seasonal affective disorder and national politics.

Purgatory, for example, had practically emptied during one of the big marches in the city. That had been a reasonably quiet day.

This had not been.

Three different service calls, only one of which had gone normally, and Nicole was really starting to wonder if she was doing more harm than good just by working today. She wasn’t even sure _why_. It was a new moon. Honey was at her most docile. And yet Purgatory itself seemed to be hellbent on making her wish she’d called in sick, busting out the full range of experiences. First was the so-called “drifter” that turned out to be just a rummaging urban fox, then the shouting match that turned into a fistfight at Shorty’s...

And last but certainly not least, the squelching, gooey thing that she found chewing on a wrecked car a few kilometers away from the trailer park.

She still wasn’t sure _what_ she was going to put in her report about that. Maybe Nedley would just conveniently lose that report too. All the cases she ended up working on with BBD seemed to be getting that treatment, and she didn’t really feel like explaining in official documentation that, in addition to various other disasters, at one point Wynonna had gone careening past her, yelling the whole way and flailing for balance. Nicole’s right arm was probably bruised where she’d caught an elbow and sometimes she really wished she hadn’t given herself a reputation for _thorough reporting_.

Worse than all that, the fact that it was a new moon and that Honey was pretty far in the background meant that even hours later, her arm was still tender and her knee was still sore where Doc’s stupid horse had kicked her.

 _Jesus_ but working in Purgatory sure was weird.

So when she stepped up to her door, paused, and listened to someone inside talking in some kind of ancient, probably-dead language, part of her wanted to scream in pure, useless frustration.

If another demon, witch, or vampire had gotten into _her home_ and was screwing around with her cat and her furniture, she was going to have a _fit_.

She shelved that feeling, and froze on the doorstep, listening carefully. There were two voices. No, three. Two of them sounded just slightly off, staticky and distant, maybe coming through a speaker. The words being used were utterly foreign to her, but had a strange, almost conversational cadence, which made her frown. There was a distinct sound that came with spellcasting, communal reading, and chanting. There was something ancient and uniquely human in the way that by instinct, humans reading something old and arcane slowed their words and spoke with command, with confidence.

This didn’t sound like that. In fact, after another sentence, one of the distant voices actually laughed.

Nicole drew her gun, checked the safety, and carefully let herself into her home, scanning the entryway and the stairs. Nothing. She took a step forward and flicked her gaze to the kitchen, then the far side of the living room. The voices hadn’t stopped—whoever was in the house hadn’t heard her come inside. One of the crackling, distant voices spoke again, more quickly, almost animated, perhaps recounting a story. Nicole raised her pistol to about level with her shoulder, narrowed her eyes, and took another step so she could look past the wall and see into her living room.

Waverly was sitting on her couch, and was laughing at whatever the content of the other person’s anecdote was. She was sitting length-wise, her feet on the couch and her knees propped up. Calamity Jane was sitting on her feet. Like any good Earp, paranoid as hell itself, she was facing toward the door, but her attention was on a tablet she held against her raised knees. She spoke again in that foreign language Nicole couldn’t place—was it Latin? Maybe it was Latin?—and beamed at whoever was on the screen.

Her gaze flicked up, eyes momentarily widening as she took in the sight of Nicole in the entryway. Nicole blinked back at her, and Waverly glanced at the pistol, and it was Nicole’s good fortune that she merely looked _confused._ As if her girlfriend coming home with a gun in hand wasn’t cause for alarm, it was just a bit _odd._

Purgatory. _Honestly_.

Nicole glanced around the room, then mouthed, _no one else here?_

Waverly shook her head a fraction, then glanced down at her screen, saying something with a bright smile that Nicole recognized as Waverly’s _oh don’t worry everything’s fine!_ tone. Nicole lowered the pistol and slid it back into its holster on her duty belt. Right. This was totally not her day. She rubbed at her eyes with her fingers before letting out a breath and heading for the stairs to put away her gear.

“I’m sorry guys,” Waverly said, in English this time, perhaps for Nicole’s benefit. “My um. My girlfriend just got home, I better tap out.”

Nicole paused, instinctively raising a hand and then hesitating, trying to figure out how to say _no it’s okay, you don’t have to stop what you’re doing for me_ in a half-second game of charades. Waverly was grinning and the two other people on the call were saying something pleasant and salutational, and Waverly waved at the screen before clicking a button along the side, dropping the smile to something more... something. Nicole wasn’t quite sure how to describe the look on her face. Sad, maybe. Uncomfortable?

“Hey,” Waverly said, popping up from the couch and weaving around the coffee table to give Nicole a hug and a quick kiss. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean for you to... I mean I didn’t mean for that to run so long.”

Nicole blinked, deciding on gut impulse that she didn’t like where that sentence had been going before Waverly had changed course. “You know you’re allowed to have other friends than me, Waves. Right?” Waverly paused for a moment too long, and Nicole frowned. “Waves.”

“Yeah,” she said, with a forced ease to her voice. “Of course, yeah, I know that.”

“Waverly,” Nicole said, more gently.

“They’re,” Waverly began, and then frowned, considering her words. “Listen, the thing about being _fluent_ in dead languages is, well, fluency takes _upkeep_.” She chewed on her lip and crossed her arms over her stomach, and Nicole carefully kept a frown off her face. There was no Earp defiance here, just discomfort, and that bothered Nicole more than whatever it was that Waverly seemed to have decided that Nicole would dislike. “You know, talking with other people who know it. Using the languages so you don’t get rusty.”

“ _Oh_ , of course,” Nicole said. “So you get together with other people to chat and practice, that makes sense.”

“Yeah. Only, well, Purgatory is a bit low on other people who speak Latin and, uh, a couple others, so...” Waverly gestured tightly at the tablet on Nicole’s coffee table without really uncrossing her arms. “We use video calls instead. Once a week, when we can, though as you can imagine it’s gotten a bit crazy lately.”

“Now how come I’ve never known that my girlfriend is part of a secret coterie keeping ancient languages alive?” Nicole said, and offered her a big, dopey grin. “That’s _awesome_.”

Waverly blinked, clearly startled. “Wait, what?”

“Waverly,” Nicole said, and took her hands, pulling them down from where they’d tucked in under her elbows. “I am so glad that you have things that you do that are just yours. I mean where are those guys from, anyway?”

“Uh,” Waverly said, clearly still off-balance. “Uh, Jean, teaches linguistics at Université Paris-Sorbonne, and Meera, she’s a post-grad at EFLU in Hyderabad.”

“So you have friends in France and in _India_ ,” Nicole countered, “With whom you talk in _dead languages_ to catch up and swap stories about your week, and you thought I wouldn’t think that’s the coolest thing in the world?”

For a moment Waverly just stared at her. Then two. And then Nicole felt her own smile crack and fall apart.

Nicole had known, deep down, that she and Waverly were more alike than people thought they were. They were both inclined to do for others before themselves. They worked too hard, and did too much, just to make other people comfortable. They gave, and gave, and _gave_ until they simply _gave out_ , put themselves back together, and started over. Nicole had known, deep down, that while Waverly had not really been closeted for being interested in women, that didn’t mean she didn’t have secrets.

Nicole also knew that Waverly was one of the most intelligent, capable women she had ever known. And she knew that Waverly had always been brilliant, but she kept it in check, hiding it the same way Nicole hid her wolf. If lycanthropy was a metaphor for the duality of man, then Waverly had a wolf all her own. Because all Earps do is stand out, and no, maybe Waverly wasn’t an Earp by blood. But she was an Earp by choice. And worse, she was the Earp who chose to _stay_. The Earp who chose to live in town and serve beer to bigots who would always judge anyone with that last name.

So Waverly had hidden the breadth and brilliance of her own mind. She’d masked the truth from everyone around her. Nicole wanted to blame Champ, but it wasn’t just him. It was him and all the people in town like him who made her feel like sticking out meant being knocked down. She wanted to blame Ward, too, but it wasn’t just him either. It was all the people who had taught her, directly or not, that life was going to knock you down anyway, so the best way to make it, to survive, was to go along with it, and keep your head down, and hide whatever made you different as well as you could.

So Waverly hid. She shoved the best parts of her out of sight, behind curtains and Shorty’s t-shirts, and she played at being _normal_. Played at being just a small-town mind in a small-town girl. Living in a closet.

Not everyone’s steel cage was in the basement.

But the problem with being in a cage, or in the closet, is that after a while, it becomes your whole world.

“Oh, _Waverly_ ,” Nicole whispered, and was sure Waverly could see all her heart written on her face. She might as well have painted it on the walls in neon.

Waverly ducked her head, making a sound that was _suspiciously_ similar to a sniffle, but might have been a laugh, and leaned forward until the top of her head found Nicole’s chest. Nicole wrapped her arms around Waverly’s shoulders and blew out a breath.

“You always surprise me,” Waverly said, and her voice shook, but was also a little rueful, like it was something that had been on her mind for a while. “Always, always, always.”

Nicole pressed a kiss to the back of Waverly’s head, by virtue of it being the closest thing she could reach, and smiled a little. “Yeah well. I think you’re amazing. The rest just happens naturally.”

“Bullshit,” Waverly muttered.

“It isn’t,” Nicole said, without particular fervor or objection. “Hate to break it to you, Waverly, but you make loving you pretty damn easy.”

Waverly let out a rather wet-sounding laugh, and leaned back, wiping at her face with one hand. “I dunno about that. What about Rosita? Or how shitty I was to you after the DNA results?”

Nicole waved a hand dismissively, as if shooing away a fly, and did her best imitation of a British accent. “Trifles, all, I tell you.”

(It wasn’t a very good imitation. Accents were hardly her strong suit.)

Waverly scoffed, but she was smiling a little, and she gestured to her face with both hands. “God, look at me, I’m a hot mess.”

“Yeah,” Nicole said, nodding thoughtfully. “But you’re also a _brilliant_ mess.”

Waverly pressed her lips together and looked down. “I’m not that—”

“Brilliant,” Nicole insisted. “Waverly, come on. Who did all the research on the revenants? Who figured out Doc’s identity, and my secret, with nothing but gut instinct, a sharp eye, and a few good resources?”

Waverly frowned. “The revenant stuff is just because I had way too much time on my hands,” she said, and Nicole set a finger against her lips to stop her.

“No, the revenant stuff is because you knew you were looking in the right place and _never gave up_.”

Waverly blinked, and stopped trying to talk through Nicole’s finger. Nicole dropped her hand, letting two fingers instead tuck under Waverly’s chin and draw her upward and a step closer.

“You’re determined, and you’re clever, and you can think through _anything_ ,” she said. “You don’t let anyone stop you, no matter how big or strong or scary they are. You stood up against a _witch_ , Waverly. Do you know how cool that is? You fought down a demon for _two months_ even as it was trying to tear you apart and make you its puppet.”

They did not often speak of Mictian, and bringing him up made Waverly’s face turn ashen. For a moment, Nicole thought she’d gone too far. Then, as she came to some internal conclusion Waverly’s gaze hardened, flinty with resolve. Nicole grinned. God it was a good look on her.

“You speak dead languages and you can translate ancient spells and you were ready to face down a _vampire_ just cuz she was a dick,” Nicole added, teasing out an icy frown by bringing up Loretta. “You’re so much stronger than this town thinks,” she said, lowering her voice to something soft and lethally serious. “So if you think for a _second_ that I don’t think you’re one of the most amazing women I have ever known in my _entire life_ —”

Truth be told, she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to end her little speech. It had been a bit unplanned, and not terribly well organized, but Waverly grabbed her by the shirt collar, hauled her down, and kissed her, hard, and after that it didn’t much matter.

Waverly was panting, when she finally broke away, but she kept her grip on Nicole’s collar so that Nicole couldn’t move back. Nicole didn’t think it was the kiss that had done it, either, though it had been a pretty damn good one. Waverly’s face was flushed, her body pressed hard against Nicole’s. She was trembling, like it was all too much and she was fit to burst from simple overload.

“Did you,” she said, sounding hoarse and way, way too vulnerable, “Did you mean all of that.”

“Every word, baby.” Nicole kissed the tip of her nose. "Every goddamn word.”

“Good,” Waverly whispered, and her fingers moved in Nicole’s collar, clenching and unclenching in a tight, uneasy gesture, wrinkling it. “I... good. I’m s—”

“Don’t.”

Waverly blinked, and set her hands flat against Nicole’s chest, one of her thumbs smoothing over the nameplate on her uniform, the other pulling the collar aside to find the silver scar just beneath, tracing the length of it.

“Don’t _ever_ apologize for being who you are, Waverly Earp.”

Waverly looked up at her, and there was something in those soft hazel eyes that Nicole had only rarely seen. Trust, and hope, and a bit of confidence, too. Real, honest confidence, not the mask of bravado and blasé nihilistic determination that both Earps kept in their pockets like spare change.

Nicole watched her face, and read the slow understanding in Waverly’s expression, and nodded, once. “Okay?”

The corner of Waverly’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I just want to say that like, _I know_ nobody says sports are "in season" like they're talking about a particularly overripe basket of strawberries but this is the same woman who called it "sports-yelling and down-falling" so, I mean...


	10. Reminders of a Life Well-Lived

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the quiet moments when things have finally calmed down a little, Waverly and Nicole take stock, tallying their scars and looking toward the future.
> 
> Set after Chapter 72.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw [@heathermgirls](https://twitter.com/heathermgirls)' tweet about "do you think sometimes during the night Waverly brushes her fingers across the spot where Nicole got shot" and got a Lot Of Feelings for post s2 Wolf!Haught so... here we are.

 

Borrowing Nicole’s senses, even just a little bit, whatever it was that their bond let her take and use for herself, definitely had its drawbacks. It took her a week to adjust to the changes to her taste buds caused by her new, more adept sense of smell, and on two occasions she’d ripped bottles and jars out of Wynonna’s hand and ignored the protests that _hey that’s still edible!_ Similarly, taking deep sniffs of flowers she liked now made her sneeze, and she had learned to stand back about a foot to enjoy them.

And then there was the time she’d had a migraine triggered by a fire alarm test in the Purgatory Sheriff’s Office. The alarms had always been piercing but now it was absolutely agonizing, overtaking her ability to think or see or hear anything else. Hell, she was pretty sure the only reason it didn’t send Nicole writhing and howling to the floor was Nedley’s warning earlier that morning that she wear earplugs.

Though—and she wouldn’t admit this to anyone else for fear of dying of shame—the increased senses _were_ kind of nice when they were in bed together. Now she could hear every tiny hitch in Nicole’s breath, see every tremor of her muscles, smell the sweat and tension and the desire Nicole was holding in her hands like a fragile bird, caged but loud and boisterous with the need to be free. On several occasions it occurred to her to ask Nicole if it had always been like this for her, intense and loud and almost smothering with the various smells and sounds and tastes, but she had a feeling that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t manage to word that question in a way that wouldn’t sound very strange.

It did mean, though, that when Nicole had her pinned to her own bed one afternoon on one of Nicole’s few and precious days off, bending over her to touch and kiss and generally debauch, saying that Waverly was _a bit wired up_ by all the stimulus—both direct and indirect—would be an understatement. She arched her back and pawed at the headboard with both hands, her fingers tracing the bars and spindles of the wood until she could find safe places to grip. She felt Nicole nuzzle along the curves of her ribs, then felt her stop. The sudden change in sensation made her blow out a breath.

“Nicole...”

Nicole ignored the plaintive, desperate sound, and stayed exactly where she was. And then Waverly felt what was unmistakably her tongue sliding across the faint but jagged-edged scar tissue there, just below where her bra strap would have been. Where that assassin had shot her during the siege on the Homestead.

The touch made her hiss, a sound of pure instinct.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” Nicole murmured, picking her head up.

“No,” Waverly said, shaking her head. “Sorry, no, course not. Just. Startled me.”

Nicole looked down again, brushing the pads of two fingers just gently over the cruel lines the mark made on her skin. “I hate that I wasn’t here.”

“To be fair,” Waverly said, chuckling. “We weren’t using any labels back then, and you being here all the time would’ve been pretty complicated to explain to my sister. Sisters, even.”

Nicole smirked, but said nothing. Her eyes still traced the scar, scanning, as if she was memorizing the look and shape of it. She rolled aside, propped herself on one elbow, and ran her hand along Waverly’s skin, following well-traveled paths up her ribs, over the curves of her breasts, along the lines of her collarbones.

“What’s this one?” she asked, her voice soft, her finger tapping a tiny divot in Waverly’s shoulder.

“Airsoft gun.”

Nicole narrowed her eyes in disapproval.

“Champ,” Waverly said, waving a hand as if that should explain everything. Maybe it did, because Nicole moved on.

Her hand strayed further, following the slope of Waverly’s arm to a notched little mark just by her wrist.

“This one?”

“Some dumb dare,” she said. “Willa. I don’t even fully remember what happened.”

That wasn’t the whole truth, and she could feel Nicole’s gaze searing through her, well aware she wasn’t saying everything that needed to be said. She didn’t remember what the dare was, but she did remember getting a thick sliver of wood from the barn’s beams jammed into her skin so hard it took almost an hour to get all of the little bits out.

“But here,” Nicole murmured, laying her hand gently to Waverly’s chest, just about centered over her breastbone. “There’s so many right here.”

Waverly’s thoughts fractured apart, overtaken by feelings. She closed her eyes, afraid she’d start crying.

“Yeah.”

Nicole leaned in, pressing a kiss to her nose, then to each of her cheeks, then to her lips. Waverly let her, then opened her eyes and took in Nicole’s face, reading the feeling in her eyes, the slant of her brow, the tug at the corner of her mouth.

She lifted her hand, brushing her thumb over the tiny scar near Nicole’s eye.

“What’s this one?”

Nicole grinned. “Your turn, huh.”

“Yeah.”

Nicole rolled onto her back and let Waverly climb up over her. “Dog bite, believe it or not. When I was super young.”

“Damn.” Waverly looked a little longer at her face, then drew her gaze down, tracking a hand along Nicole’s chest. She traced one of the pale silvery-white scars that marked her skin from collarbone to the curve of her breast. “This one I know.”

“Mm.”

She let her hand trail lower, over the curve of Nicole’s belly until she found the pale, two-inch scar just shy of her navel. “And this,” she said. “The crocotta.”

“Silver knife,” Nicole said, agreeing. “Bastard.”

“I’m glad Wynonna shot him,” Waverly added, with surprising heat.

Her fingers tracked sideways, taking hold of Nicole’s wrist and turning her arm until the silvery bite marks showed, where the Widow had bit her. “What’s this one?” she asked, her thumb brushing another, much lighter mark.

“Broke my arm falling out of a tree when I was nine,” Nicole offered, smiling absently. “Dad was beside himself.”

Waverly smiled, but let her attention track across all the little marks. The stab wound in her thigh, another silver scar on her left arm, where Shae had cut her to show how silver burned. Nicole was a woman who’d been tied to a metaphorical car of life and dragged along a mile of rough road but you couldn’t tell just by looking at her from afar. She smiled easily and she wore kindness and compassion like armor and unless you were really looking, you wouldn’t know how _much_ she felt, how deeply the world had hurt her.

That she still got up every morning and put on a uniform and a badge and _helped_ people, and believed with all her heart and soul that it was the right thing to do, was a more vivid testimony to her character than even that Clydesdale-sized wolf form she’d achieved would ever be.

Waverly took Nicole’s hand in hers, examining the silver scar there in her palm and the back of her hand. Two of Nicole’s fingers twitched, but the others only followed after a beat, clumsy and slow. They’d been like that ever since the fight with Shae. Waverly clicked her tongue, fending off the last vestiges of guilt that tried to crawl up her throat when she examined that lingering damage. She kissed the stiff fingers, pressing her lips to soft skin until Nicole inhaled. She didn’t say anything, but her expression softened, like she knew what Waverly was thinking.

Waverly leaned forward and kissed Nicole’s shoulder. Her lips brushed the raw, silvery marks of Shae’s teeth. A thought hit her like a freight train.

But now was not the time to ask it. The other side of being “eager to please,” Waverly had found, was learning how to get what you want, and a lot of it had to do with knowing when and how to ask for it. She had learned how to track people’s schedules and only make requests when she knew the other party was most likely to be in a good mood. She’d learned how to open conversations with offerings of time or food, easing into what she wanted only after she’d smoothed out potential snags. She’d learned how to read people’s faces, to catalogue the tension in their hands and shoulders or the easy smile that said they were willing to hear news they might not like.

And she’d learned when _not_ to ask things, even if she wanted to. Even though words like _insatiable curiosity_ and _vivacious reader_ had followed her like little personal stormclouds in her youth. Despite that, she had learned how to _wait_ for what she wanted.

Though she hadn’t reckoned with the fact that Nicole knew her even better than she knew herself.

“What’s on your mind?”

She hesitated. “Just you.”

“Mm-mm,” Nicole said, chuckling a little. “I can feel you burning with it.”

One of these days, Waverly would get used to the fact that where she borrowed senses from Nicole, Nicole felt some of the surge and simmer of her feelings.

“Right,” she muttered, a bit darkly.

“Ask it, baby. It’s okay.”

Waverly chewed on her lip. “Well. I was thinking.”

Nicole nodded, as if to say _why is this night any different from all others?_

“Do you ever think about biting me?”

Nicole’s eyes went wide, the brown in them flickering sharp, crystalline gold for half a breath, and Waverly blinked, trying to figure out what the hell _that_ meant.

“You’re uh. You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“Well it’s.” Waverly felt her face heat up and her eyes skittered away before she forced them back to Nicole’s face. This had to be good communication. This _had_ to be transparent. She cleared her throat. “I was just thinking about how the bite fixed your shoulder.”

“Oh.”

She frowned, her gaze tracking to the scar on Nicole’s cheek again. “Though then again, if you have scars from childhood...”

Nicole chuckled. “Do you want me to answer or do you want to just think it through the rest of the way.”

“Oh hush,” Waverly grumbled, letting her hand hit Nicole’s chest with a soft and rather un-intimidating little _thwap_. She considered it for a bit. “It doesn’t fix past things, then.”

“No. My shoulder was so recent that the w—” She caught herself and smiled. “That _Honey_. Could fix the bulk of it. But the older scars she couldn’t do anything about. If I. Uh.” She cleared her throat. “If I bit you. It wouldn’t touch any of this.” She brushed a thumb lightly over the scar on Waverly’s side to illustrate.

“Rats,” Waverly said.

“But in a more general sense,” Nicole murmured. “It’s. Well, I guess we should talk about it at some point.”

Waverly blinked. “What?”

“I mean, if you’re thinking about it at all, it’s something we should talk about.”

“I’m not sure I like how you’re phrasing that.”

Nicole grimaced. “Sorry, I just mean that.” She paused, thinking, and chewed on her lip. “What I mean is, we haven’t talked about it before. And. If it’s on your mind, if it’s something you think you might want, then. Then we should talk.”

“Do you _not_ want to?”

Nicole’s gaze turned into something agonized and strained. “Please don’t do that. This isn’t about not wanting you, Waverly, or somehow thinking you’re not enough. You’ve _got_ to know that.”

She blew out a breath and nodded, tense. “No, I know. I do. Sorry.”

“I didn’t get to pick it,” Nicole said. “If I _ever_ bite you. It absolutely _has_ to be something you’ve chosen, with both eyes open and well aware.”

“I’m.” Waverly cocked her head to one side. “You know, I’m actually surprised it’s even on the table.”

“I don’t _love_ the idea,” Nicole said. “It’s called a curse for good reason. But I think... I think that Honey and I could make it. You know. Okay. Bearable. Help you get to something like where we are. If it was really what you wanted, I mean.” Her gaze skittered away, then back, and she was pink up to her ears. “I wouldn’t mind having a mate who can run _with_ me instead of riding me like a really big, shaggy motorcycle.”

“Why does it sound like there’s a but coming.”

“But,” Nicole said, and grinned despite herself. “First off, your sister would _kill_ me so you have to have that conversation with her _first_.”

Waverly groaned and flopped down, tucking her head into the curve of Nicole’s shoulder. “Do I gotta.”

“Absolutely,” Nicole said, and chuckled, combing her fingers through Waverly’s hair. “But there’s something else.”

“Hm.”

“We don’t know who or... what you are. And until we do.” She scratched idly at the side of her neck, an almost nervous gesture. “I don’t want to find out the hard way that whatever you are, whatever Bobo meant when he called you ‘kin,’ doesn’t mix well with lycanthropy.”

“That is. Hm.” Waverly pressed her lips together. “Surprisingly reasonable.”

“I try,” Nicole murmured.

“And what if it turns out it’s not?” she asked, and even to her own ears she sounded just a bit too sullen. “Compatible, I mean.”

“Then whatever you are,” Nicole murmured, lifting a hand to cup Waverly’s cheek. “No matter what we find out. Even if I never bite you. Whoever and whatever you are, you’re more than special enough for me, baby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Call it unoriginal but I kind of loved the idea that Nicole's scars were from the same or similar circumstances as Kat's real scars so I borrowed those...


	11. On the Subject of Eurotrash Vampires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing scene from 3x01. (Includes spoilers, technically, but mostly indirect ones!)
> 
> Set after chapter 72.

It was a bit before dawn when they’d finally gotten the Gardners’ house mostly cleaned up. Nedley had taken the lead in corralling townspeople, and Nicole found him in the front room, giving orders to a couple uniforms who’d, thank god, avoided most of the glamour mess. She tapped his shoulder and jerked a thumb toward the back door.

“Gotta make a call,” she said.

He looked at her, reading the intention and double-meanings in her words. He nodded, and she headed outside into the gloomy pre-dawn darkness, pulling her cell from her pocket and dialing a number she seemed to be using more and more lately.

“Who’s callin’,” rumbled a voice she didn’t recognize.

“Moonsinger,” she said, putting as much of a ripping growl into the word as she could.

“Hold on.”

She crossed her free arm over her chest and rested her elbow on it, tapping one uncharacteristically heeled shoe in the snow, and waited. It was cold outside, bitter cold, and even despite her internal furry space heater her thin, slinky black number was not doing much to keep the frigid plains winds away.

Finally the other end of the line clicked and a low, sultry voice purred lilting Scandinavian vowels into her ear.

“I’m sure you have good reason for disturbing me at this late hour,” Loretta said.

“Yeah, I think I do,” Nicole said, almost snarling. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Loretta.”

“Honestly, darling,” Loretta drawled, “If you insist on pitching softballs like that it takes all the _fun_ out of mocking you.”

“What?”

“You’ll forgive me if I am not positively _shocked_ that a werewolf wants to speak of _bones_.”

“Oh for—” Nicole growled and swept her hand through her hair. “—I wanted to say, thanks ever so much for the _warning_.”

Loretta was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke she didn’t sound hostile, exactly, but definitely on the displeased side of _unimpressed_. “All right, I’ll indulge this petulant _whining_ , but just this once. What is it, exactly, that I didn’t tell you?”

“You might’ve seen fit to let me know that some of your _Continental cousins_ were coming our way.”

Loretta made a surprisingly vulgar noise of disgust and then, by the sound of it, pulled her phone away from her face and actually spat on the ground. You know, as if that was a normal, modern thing people did when someone mentioned something distasteful. “I did wonder what their ultimate destination was, after they left my club.”

“You _saw_ them, and you still didn’t think to tell me they were headed west toward Purgatory?”

“I assure you, Moonsinger, I’ve little interest in the comings and goings of those overblown _ponces_. As it is I was longing for cause to eject them from my club. I was hardly talking to them about their itinerary.”

Nicole frowned. Loretta was many things, but she was rarely openly angry, and the ice in her voice was obvious even through the phone. “If you dislike them so much, why’d you even let them inside?”

“Because,” Loretta said with an aggrieved sigh. “While calling them _kin_ is like calling lions and bobcats the same, they are family. Technically. I have a duty of hospitality to _family_.” She spat out the word like it tasted sour.

“You still could’ve warned us.”

“Again,” Loretta said, sounding distinctly underwhelmed by Nicole’s frustration. “Family. It would reflect poorly on me if I so openly laid a trap for my... cousins, as you put it. In any case, it’s clear from the fact that you are speaking to me that you survived.”

“That’s not the point—”

“You will also forgive me,” she said, cutting over Nicole, “If I thought that the people in your little Triangle had the good sense not to invite in a bus full of _vampires_. Besides. You bested that overgrown mongrel you married all by your lonesome. Surely you weren’t actually _concerned_ that a mangy group of over-sequined, clown-faced, disco-loving Nighthunters could beat you _and_ all your little pack.”

Nicole growled, but sighed. “Fine. Just. In the future, I’d _appreciate it_ if you would find some way to alert us to supernaturals coming our way. Better to avoid unnecessarily casualties, to the humans in my care _and_ to the rest of us.”

“I will take that as a suggestion, and not a demand,” Loretta said loftily, with a hint of bite in her voice to indicate her displeasure at being told what to do by a werewolf. “And will take it under advisement. In the meantime, congratulations. I’m sure I can find some way to reward you and your pack for ridding me of those overdressed ex-Soviet twits.”

“Great,” Nicole muttered. “Look forward to it.”

“Oh, and happy hunting, Moonsinger,” Loretta purred, and ended the call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops well that didn't take long I guess.
> 
> I actually had a DIFFERENT vampire-related b-side planned to work on next, but then 3.01 came along, and while it sure threw a LOT of wrenches into Wolves canon (COME ON NICOLE WHAT DON'T YOU REMEMBER), damn if this idea didn't grab me by the shirt collar and drag me along for a ride. :P


	12. January 2016 in Billings, Montana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikael tries to help Nicole adjust back to a semi-normal life, but it turns out he's got some weaknesses of his own when it comes to living in a mundane world.
> 
> Set before Chapter 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This starts and stops a little abruptly because it was chopped out of the middle of a longer piece, but it turned out this joke didn't quite fit where it was supposed to go, so I'm dusting it off and sharing it by itself. ;)

“Are you sure about this,” Nicole asked, eyeing the sprawling asphalt and its decidedly non-empty lot. For it being after 8 pm on a Tuesday in _Billings, Montana_ of all places, the Target he’d chosen had a surprising number of customers still out and about. The neon signs on the storefront cast out a swath of red and bright, eye-searing white. A motley collection of parked cars cast long, sprawling shadows and she watched them arc and stretch across the ground as her friend-and-driver pulled into a space and turned off the engine.

“Of course I am,” he said. “Wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

She frowned at the bright lights coming from the shop’s big glass doors. A handful of customers went in and out as they sat for a moment, listening to the engine click and hiss as it started to cool.

“What if you’re wrong about me?”

Mikael turned to face her behind the steering wheel of his Corvette. He was handsome, even she could tell that. He had the features and elegant, boyish charm of a young Scandinavian god, albeit with the general style and fashion sense of a 1950s greaser. He dressed like someone had neglected to inform him the days of slicked, perfect pompadours and leather jackets had ended a few decades ago, and tonight was no different. There was a single, loose blonde curl dangling over his forehead that looked roguishly deliberate.

The only thing he was missing was a cigarette tucked behind one ear.

“I’m not wrong,” he said smoothly. “You’ve been with me for three months, hjärtat. You’ve got the power under control. Now you just need your confidence back.”

Nicole scoffed. “Right. Sure. Confidence. That’ll do loads of good when I’ve got some poor shithead laid out on the ground bleeding because I got too angry.”

“If I’m wrong,” he drawled, and waved a careless hand. He smiled, and this time his canine teeth were too sharp. Too long. They’d extended into needle-sharp fangs, and they glinted in the light from a nearby streetlamp. “Then I am here to keep you from doing something you would regret.”

“Right,” Nicole said, as an involuntary shiver rippled up her spine. She had, albeit slowly, adjusted to the idea that the bite that made her a werewolf hadn’t just made her _not-human_ , it had made her something that the supernatural community did not exactly consider a featherweight. With a little training and a little practice, she was pretty confident that when the time came to go toe-to-toe with something that went “bump” in the night, she’d be able to hold her own. The downside, though, was that even in this new and very dark world she’d been dragged into, it was pretty hard to fly under the radar.

Mikael von Holstein, however, a 400-year-old vampire who’d moved to North America from Sweden sometime in the early 1700s, more than just _outclassed_ her. If it came to a contest of might and will, she had no doubts he could crush her, and he’d do it with about as much effort as a child squishing an ant.

“Come, then,” he said. “We came at night because there will be fewer people.”

“And so you don’t turn into a heap of ash, right?” she asked.

He got out of the car, chuckling. “I’m not _quite_ so easy to kill as that,” he said. “But, yes. Sunlight and I do not get along very well. Easier to work under darkness.”

Mikael closed his door, and she was grateful he hadn’t slammed it. She followed suit, and he locked the doors with his key the old-school way, actually sticking it into the lock and turning it with the mindless contentment of long habit. He headed toward the store, picking his way between the noses of the parked cars that were scattered in clusters around the lot. Here and there he even had to turn sideways to shuffle in between them, which seemed like an awful lot of work.

“Don’t you want to walk over there?” she asked, jerking a thumb toward the center of the aisle. “I mean, it’d be easier.”

“I prefer to walk between the cars, if you don’t mind.”

She shrugged. “You know, my mom used to say I shouldn’t.” She followed him anyway, weaving between the noses of parked cars and pickup trucks. “Said a car could slip out of gear and crush you against the next.”

“Well,” he said drily, “I don’t appear in rear view mirrors. So I’ll take the odds of being pinned by a Tacoma over being hit by a soccer mom who was in too much of a rush to actually turn her head.”

“Oh,” she said finally, trying desperately not to laugh. Mikael was pretty easygoing, but he came from a time where a misplaced insult might get you killed, and one did not laugh at a vampire easily. “Yeah, that seems reasonable.”

His smile was absolutely dazzling, and she jogged to catch up beside him.

“So why Target?” she asked.

“Bright lights, lots of sound and smell, but mostly pretty mild, as shops go. No overpowering cologne or air freshener. Lots of foot traffic, but at a time of day and in a town that won’t have thousands moving in and out.” He hummed thoughtfully. “Also I like their popcorn.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” she said. “Have you done this before?”

“With my kind, yes,” he admitted. He led the way across the driveway and approached the front of the store, stretching his shoulders as he went. “Never with a werewolf. But the principle’s the same. You want to reintroduce young supernaturals to mundane environments in a way that’s as controlled as you can make it. Reduces the risks of accidents.”

He headed up toward the front of the store, but just past the curb she paused. There was a smell that didn’t quite... fit, somehow. There were lots of smells she expected: gasoline and exhaust, rubber and oil, cologne and perfume, coffee and hot dogs and pretzels and soaps and the general odor of humanity milling about and running errands.

But there was something else, too. Something distinctly animal. Earthy, rich. Part of her perked up a little. It was the part of her that Mikael called _her wolf_ , the part that stirred when she was hungry or angry or in pain. It offered other thoughts. Not words, exactly, but... feelings. Rich earth. Wooden fences around farmers’ pastures. Thick mud that squelches between paw pads and cakes under nails. The lowing of passive, heavy mammals with few concerns and a mild, mostly-forgotten fear of hunters in the dark.

She frowned and sniffed at the air. Surely the wolf was not telling her there was a _cow_ hanging around in a Montanan suburb. Further off in the countryside, sure. But here? Close enough to override human shopper smells _?_ That didn’t make any sense.

There was a low _thump_ noise of a solid object hitting glass and Nicole jumped, scanning her immediate surroundings. Mikael stumbled back a step from the sliding glass doors, rubbing his head.

 

“That’s _enough_ ,” he said a minute later. “Nicole. Honestly. It wasn’t _that_ funny.”

Sure, one does not blithely offer insults to a vampire, but sometimes there’s just no help for it. Mikael, to his credit, didn’t seem to be taking offense to it, though he was frowning spectacularly at her as she leaned against one of the big red sculptures on the front curb.

“How?” she asked, wheezing, barely managing to get the question out.

For a moment he said nothing, wrinkling up his nose in displeasure.

“Come on, promise I won’t laugh anymore,” she said.

“I don’t trigger the sensor,” he said testily.

“Oh my _god_ ,” she wheezed, wiping tears from her face. He tapped his foot.

“If you’re _quite_ finished,” he grumbled.


	13. A Christmas Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wynonna shares a new recipe for Christmas cookies with Waverly and it has some... unexpected consequences.
> 
> Set after Chapter 72.

There was something different about the Earp home when Nicole arrived after a long shift. It wasn’t Christmas, though the season had certainly struck Purgatory with a vengeance. Another year, another elf costume. No, what had caught her attention was a scent, something that smelled somehow familiar, and yet totally foreign. Something she’d definitely never smelled at the Homestead before.

She hesitated on the porch and idly sniffed at the air, trying to figure it out. When she finally stepped inside she heard Waverly’s voice from the kitchen, by way of some quiet and industrious humming, and the urge to go and nuzzle her girlfriend was surprisingly strong. Nicole shrugged out of her uniform jacket and tugged at the only upper button she hadn’t already undone, and sniffed at the strange, enchanting scent floating through the house. She stowed her duty belt in the entryway, trying to place the smell. Almost like licorice, maybe?

Whatever it was, Honey was _reveling_ in it, the pressure of her mind going all gooey and soft with a level of affection Nicole didn’t often feel from her.

“Waves?” she called, her voice preceding her into the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“Baking,” Waverly said with a grin, her hands busy pulling out a rack of cookies from the oven. Nicole stepped up behind her, grinning, and Waverly looked up at her. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Nicole agreed, resting her chin on Waverly’s shoulder to look at what she was doing. “What is it?”

“It’s a new recipe Wynonna suggested to me,” Waverly said, reaching up with one hand to scritch through Nicole’s hair just over her ear. Then she laughed. “Baby, I have never heard you make that noise. Are you _purring?”_

Nicole’s mouth somewhat mulishly said “ _no_ ,” but the rumbling noise in her chest and the way she was unconsciously nosing under Waverly’s jaw said otherwise.

“Baby. Seriously. Give me a second to get these onto the rack.”

Nicole—or was it Honey? It was getting hard to tell—grumbled, but she withdrew, allowing Waverly space to work. She hovered nearby, sniffing at the implausibly interesting smell of spice and sugar coming off the cookies on Waverly’s pan.

“What’s in it?” Nicole asked, and self-consciously wiped at her chin. God help her, she was drooling. “It smells...”

“Anise seed,” Waverly said with a beaming smile. “No chocolate, so they’re safe for you.”

Nicole reached for one and gave a little _yip_ of dismay when Waverly smacked her hand.

“Not yet! They’re not cooled yet, baby.”

Nicole pouted, tilting her head. “Please?”

“No.”

“ _Please?”_ Nicole asked, trying again, nosing along Waverly’s jaw and snuggling in against her chest.

“No!” Waverly complained, laughing.

Nicole grinned and took a careful step back. “Are you sure there’s _nothing_ I can do...” she murmured, letting her hand trail down the front of her shirt, her fingers flicking across buttons. “To convince you?”

Waverly’s breath caught and her eyes were on the skin behind Nicole’s shirt.

“You, ma’am,” she said, though the breathless quality to her voice rather ruined the effect, “Play _dirty_.”

“I do,” Nicole said with a grin, winking as she slid out of her shirt and left it across a dining room chair.

“I really shouldn’t reward that behavior.”

“No?” Nicole said, feigning innocence. She arched her back, reaching behind her to unclasp her bra. “That’s a shame.”

Waverly held out for an admirable number of seconds until Nicole dropped her bra on the chair by her shirt.

“ _Fine_ ,” she mumbled, pawing blindly behind her back for one of the anise cookies without actually taking her eyes off Nicole. “But.”

Nicole grinned, feeling the flash of gold across her vision before she even saw it. “Mm?”

“Come fetch your prize,” Waverly breathed, and popped the cookie partially into her mouth.

Nicole laughed and closed the distance, wrapping her arms around Waverly to hold her close as she bit into the cookie and pulled it away from Waverly’s mouth. It was dense and heavy, and Nicole bet it would be _great_ dipped in coffee. Lacking such a beverage, she freed one hand to hold the treat and catch crumbs in her palm as she bit into it, savoring the taste and texture.

It did, in fact, taste of licorice. The sweet, strange mix of flavors reminded her a little of Grampa and Gramma Haught, a memory that wasn’t as unpleasant as she thought it might be. Though maybe that was only because Honey was scratching at her attention with her short nails, scrabbling for Nicole’s focus. Honey was itching to _do_ something, to _move_ and _run_ and _play_ and she was asking politely until suddenly she _wasn’t_. Not because she’d gotten more forceful, but because Nicole really didn’t _need_ to be asked.

She wanted it too.

“Nicole?” Waverly asked gently, a touch of wariness in her voice. “You okay?”

She realized, after the fact, that she had taken a step back and was rubbing the heel of her hand into her temple, eyes scrunched closed and still chewing. When she opened her eyes her vision had gone golden at the edges and bright. Too bright, even.

“Nicole?”

Nicole grinned, shoved the cookie the rest of the way into her mouth, and then leaned forward, bumping her nose into Waverly’s.

Then, while Waverly was still spluttering over having been very profoundly _booped_ in her own home, Nicole darted outside through the side door, laughing, the sound high and downright _joyful_. She didn’t have to think about the change, she just _did_ it, meshing so seamlessly with Honey that she didn’t even rip her pants, just slipped her narrow, wolfish legs out of them and went bounding into the snow.

 

“Nicole!” Waverly yelped, chasing her girlfriend outside. Her boots and work pants were lying abandoned and empty on the snow, and she gathered up both, clutching them to her chest. Where the _hell_ had Nicole gone?

A reddish blur of fur and muscle went streaking by her, kicking up powder like a snowblower and dousing Waverly in a thin layer of white frost and fluff.

Ah. _That’s_ where she’d gone.

Waverly spat snow off her mouth and wiped at her eyes just in time to see her girlfriend—currently a huge, actually-wolf-shaped wolf roughly the size of a horse—go zooming by again, this time in the other direction and far enough away that Waverly didn’t get a new layer of snow on her. Nicole—Honey? Both of them?—zoomed from one side of the Homestead to the other, so fast and so bullet-like that Waverly found herself amazed that she didn’t bust down the fence. She was running like a hound, tongue lolling, golden-brown eyes huge and excited, ears straight up.

Affection overtook panic for a moment, and Waverly found herself giggling. Whatever had gotten into Nicole, it didn’t seem to be _hurting_ her, so she set Nicole’s clothes aside, took shelter on the porch, and pulled out her phone while Nicole spun donuts and figure-eights in the snow. Google would probably have an answer for her on this one.

And indeed it did.

“Anise seed is catnip for dogs,” she read aloud, then shook her head. “Wynonna, honestly. The one time you learn something I don’t know, and you use it for evil.”

She looked up, expecting to find Nicole still zooming across the packed earth and snow, but... there was no sign of her.

How the hell did she _lose_ a “catnip”-drugged werewolf?

“Nicole?” she asked, stepping off the porch and scanning around. The barn door was closed, so she probably wasn’t in there. The snow was about knee height in places, higher in others where Nicole had kicked up mounds with her running around, but... where the hell could she have gone?

She was still scanning, frowning at the wilderness, when Wynonna pulled up in Gus’ old truck.

“You okay babygirl?” Wynonna called through the windshield.

“Yeah,” Waverly called back, frowning as she watched the distant treeline, the half-covered grasses, the fences.

Wynonna levered the door open and hopped down, and the clank of the door closing was deafening across the flat, still, snowy landscape.

“You sure? You’re outside. In the snow. On _purpose_.”

She was halfway to Waverly’s spot in front of the porch steps when the ambush hit.

Nicole popped up out of a mound of snow, all nine hundred pounds of her, mouth split open in a huge and toothy grin.

Wynonna _shrieked_ , and probably would’ve gone for Peacemaker on sheer instinct except that her boots slid out from beneath her in the snow and she went down with a heavy, muted _whumph_ and a cascade of loose powder flying every direction.

Nicole once again took off at a dead sprint, panting up a storm, and Waverly bent double, hands on her knees, laughing hysterically.

“When I get my hands on that fuzzball!” Wynonna yelled as she struggled to right herself and get her footing in the snow, “So help me there’ll be a red fucking _wolfhead rug_ on my floor! Waverly! _Stop laughing!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many thanks to [Mischief](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischieftess) for the inspiration for this goofy thing (and the knowledge about that catnip-for-dogs thing with anise seed cuz I SURE HADN'T KNOWN THAT).
> 
> It's been a very weird year for me out west and I miss writing for this fandom, but I want to express my gratitude to all y'all who are reading this cuz that means that somehow, for some reason, ya stuck with me on this wild ride of a story. If you don't already, I highly recommend following me at [@lexraevision](https://twitter.com/lexraevision) cuz right now I'm in the review phase for a Real Life Book about a very-unlikely-hero lesbian and her Super Weird New Monster-Hunting Friends fighting an evil mage trying his best to do some _very_ messed up stuff in her hometown. Such as raiding the tomb of an ancient sorceress.
> 
> So if that sounds like it might be up your alley, or if you want to know more about other stories I'm working on (like a shiny new version of Wolves with its own all-new, all-original canon), Twitter is the best place to catch up on what I'm up to. And it will _definitely_ be the place to hear me start howling at the moon and all the stars about having news on printed, published books.
> 
> And in the meantime, happy holidays, friends. Go forth in love and be kind to your fellow humans... and your fellow werewolves. After all, you never know where they might be hiding. ;)


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